Time to Choose

By John Watson Milton

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion issue became the most important blood test for political candidates. Those who didn't follow the party line on this issue had little or no chance to win their party's endorsement. Anyone seeking middle ground was caught in the crossfire.

Time to Choose is a novel of romance in the middle of the crossfire. A story about the many choices we make personal and professional, why and how we make them, and the consequences of those choices.

Former state senator Michael Burke returns to the State Capitol after a ten year absence, to attend the funeral of a former colleague and close friend. The funeral evokes memories of bittersweet years in politics. Exhilarating victories, and crushing losses. He's reminded that he left the turbulent political arena for a more stable and balanced life, one with time and energy for his children. But after meeting an intriguing new candidate for the Senate, Dr. Patricia Culligan, he breaks a vow: never to go back to politics.

Michael Burke's return to the battleground forces him to confront his past, and understand how his choices caused harm to himself and others. And how accepting this can be a prelude to moving on with his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 21, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462835737

John Watson Milton

John Watson Milton was born in St. Paul. He graduated from Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; he also studied at the Harvard School of Business. He was elected to the Ramsey County Board and the Minnesota Senate, where he became a recognized leader in health care policy. This led to service on several boards of state and national health and medical organizations. From 1970 to 1992, he worked on political campaigns at the national, state, and local level. Milton has written commentary and editorials for daily and weekly papers, feature articles and investigative reports for magazines, speeches for political campaigns, short stories, poetry, and recipes for several cookbooks. He's a contributing writer for the bilingual weekly La Prensa de Minnesota. His novel, The Fallen Nightingale, won two national awards for historical fiction, and has been re-published in Spanish and Catalan translations. The author lives with his wife, Maureen Angélica Acosta, on a small farm in Afton, Minnesota, where he writes and grows wine grapes.

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Copyright © 2008 by John Watson Milton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Cover Photo by Robert Larson

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue, 1993

To Ernest Hemingway, who once told me: if you’re a writer, you write. No matter what happened last night, no matter how much you drank, no matter whose bed you climbed out of in the morning, you write. If you don’t, you’re not a writer.

And to my wife and partner, Maureen Angélica Acosta, who has the day-job.

The prologues are over. It is a question, now, of final belief. So, say that final belief must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.

Wallace Stevens, Asides on the Oboe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My manuscript was read by several colleagues, friends, and kindred spirits, who offered numerous suggestions and encouraged me to persevere. From the literary world: fiction writer Pat Barone; poet, columnist, and women’s rights activist Carol Connolly; Sally Dixon, board member emeritus of Graywolf Press; Malcolm and Patricia McDonald of the Afton Historical Society Press; Barcelona writer and translator Mònica Pagès, and New York writer and editor Alan Tucker. From the political arena: former St. Paul Mayors Larry Cohen and George Latimer; Bob Goff, political activist and government relations guru; the late Tom Kelley, historian and administrator of Ramsey County; former Metro Council member Todd Lefko; former state commissioner of health in Minnesota, Jan Malcolm; and Rob Scarlett, political activist and friend since the convulsive Sixties.

INTRODUCTION

When I was first elected to the Minnesota Senate, the question of abortion and women’s right to choose was a settled matter. In our state, it was prohibited, though in the late 1960’s there were efforts to modify the law. So all during the campaign, while I gabbed about everything from property taxes to the Vietnam War, abortion was barely mentioned. I don’t recall a single letter or phone call on the subject.

Three weeks after my Democratic caucus took control of the Senate for the first time in 114 years, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Roe v. Wade, and the question of women’s right to choose was again a settled matter. But what most of us failed to realize, when we heard about the court decision, was that the war had just begun. Within days, my mailbox filled with letters. Pink phone messages piled up at home and in my Senate office. Some urged support for Roe v. Wade; others asked, would I help repeal it?

In my naïveté I assumed that the same combination of energy, brains, and charm that had captivated six out of ten voters in my mostly Republican district would allow me to avoid having to cough up formulaic answers on this issue. Rather, I would bring the opposing sides together and, in the grand tradition of Woodrow Wilson, forge a lasting peace. That seemed a simple chore for a newly elected senator whose ambition was merely to save the State of Minnesota in two four-year terms and then retire… or, if asked by the right people, to do the same for the entire country.

Of course I was dreadfully wrong. The court decision on Roe v. Wade engendered the first of the blood test issues for politicians of all stripes, caught between opposing sides. And to this day, sad to say, both sides are still at war.

Many a political career has been ignited or extinguished by the abortion issue. And the most dangerous place to be is in the middle, hoping to live and let live; to love and be loved. Hoping not to be shredded by fusillades from both sides.

This novel is about one of those who were in the middle: Michael Burke.

— JWM, Afton, Minnesota, 2008

CHAPTER ONE

Icame back to the Capitol—after a decade’s absence—to say goodbye to State Senator Edward Marshall. My old pal Eddie, dead of a massive heart attack three nights before.

I heard about it on the morning news. And cried without shame, half shaved in my steamy bathroom, wishing it was a reporter’s error. Or a bad dream. I could picture some people lying cold in the casket, but not my friend Eddie. His fine sense of outrage and his defiance—surely those would keep his heart pumping strong.

I imagined Eddie glaring at me and in that growling, feisty voice reprimanding: Hey, Boy, you going to pieces over me? Don’t need that, Boy. Since we met as newly elected senators, that was his name for me. You the Boy Wonder, he’d say when we got into trouble with our mercurial, crotchety majority leader, you got us into this mess, and going to get us out of it!

No, I thought, I won’t go to pieces over you, Eddie, but oh, am I going to miss you! I thought of us fighting battles together in the Senate, yet could recall so few of them. (There had been so many, but most were now long forgotten). Nor could I recall who’d won those battles. After nearly a decade, what did it matter?

In the days that followed his death, I grieved for Eddie, and for myself. Grieved for the loss of my naïveté and youthful belief in the process—a term politicians were fond of to describe their work. With Eddie gone so suddenly, his vibrancy arrested in his own dark bedroom, I felt like a smaller, surviving member of an endangered species. Suddenly, a lot of groundcover had been blown away. The predators were circling.

* * *

There was a memorial service for Eddie at the Capitol, a Beaux Arts style masterpiece by hometown architect Cass Gilbert, who also designed the Woolworth Building in New York, at that time the world’s tallest, and the U.S. Supreme Court building. I hadn’t been in that rackety, marble cavern for nearly a decade, not since 1980, the year I decided to retire from the Senate. Eddie had been among the first to know.

You going to bail out on me, Boy? he asked with a crooked smile that suggested he didn’t believe my decision was final.

I said I was, replying quickly, squinting back at him.

Yeah, he conceded, you going, all right. I been watching you, Boy. You been draggin’ ass most of this session. That right?

I nodded. I’m burnt out, Eddie. Can’t pay my bills with what we make here. My situation at home is . . . terminal. My heart isn’t in this any more. And too many crazies here.

Ain’t that the truth!

Those friggin’ Sentinels of God are picketing my office again. The family planning bill’s coming up, suppose that’s why. But they’re harassing my staff again. And more threatening calls from the right-to-bear-arms people. What a horrible bunch! I’ve got to get out of here and get on with my life!

And… Julia leaving, he added.

That didn’t help, Eddie, I acknowledged.

Listen, with all that I don’t blame you. Thought about quitting myself and decided maybe just one more term. Business to finish here. He paused. Sure going to miss you, Boy.

So here I was back at the Capitol, after a nine year absence. As I climbed the broad stairs on the south side, I looked up at the dazzling reflection of morning sunlight off the gilded sculpture of a four-horse chariot at the top of the main entrance. A gilded quadriga from ancient times, with two buxom and barely clothed maidens on either side, each holding a pair of horses. It was the work of Daniel Chester French, who also created the brooding sculpture of Abraham Lincoln at the memorial dedicated to him in our nation’s capital. In 1905, politicians and civic boosters hoped that completion of this extravagant new temple of government would show the world that Minnesota was not some backwater of civilization. But the artfully draped, voluptuous maidens must have caused quite a stir among the prairie folk of Minnesota.

Climbing the enormous flight of stairs brought back a torrent of memories, and reminded me how completely I’d withdrawn from the political world, where for years I’d felt so alive and worked so intensely. It was more than withdrawal: a resolute struggle to regain my personal center of gravity—picking up pieces dropped when I entered the Senate, and estranging me from everything political. Never moderate in anything, I went cold turkey, even denying myself those ego nourishing visits to old haunts, with welcoming claps on the shoulder from old comrades. I refused to exploit my friendship with former colleagues by reappearing as a lobbyist. Watching former senators schmoozing and sleazing around the Capitol, peddling their influence to gain favored treatment for their clients—liquor distributors, bankers, meat packers, and the mining cartel—had left a bitter taste in my mouth. There was honor in leaving, and staying away.

Once out of the limelight, my life had become ordinary, unremarkable. I married again, became a parent again, and moved as far away from my old senate district as I could. I rediscovered the joys of spending evenings without committee meetings, dinners with the Lions and Legionnaires, and returning phone calls late into the night from needy or angry constituents.

Senator Burke? That you? After all these years?

I turned toward the husky voice: it belonged to one of the capitol security guards. I recognized his face, but he was still nameless as ever, though portlier now and balder, moving in a kind of crouch across the outer ring of the rotunda, where people were beginning to gather for the memorial service. I was surprised that he remembered my name after nearly a decade, and was jolted by the prefix: I hadn’t been senator-ed for quite a while. I shook his hand, and replied, It’s good to see you again. I wanted to call him Bob. He looked like a Bob, but I didn’t risk it.

Thank you, Senator. His voice was oddly grateful. You’re looking well, Senator. Life must agree with you. You haven’t changed a bit.

I acknowledged his courtesy, and the unintended irony. My hair was grayer, my body heavier, and my dress allowed me to blend into my downtown law firm. My mutton-chop sideburns were long gone, along with the turtlenecks and denims and double-knit leisure suits of my years in the Senate. My closet was now full of sport coats and buttoned-down cotton shirts from L.L. Bean.

I’m sorry it’s such a sad occasion, I said to the security guard. My private sorrow remained deep in my throat as my voice conveyed all the practiced, appropriate sentiment. I wasn’t ready to share my tears with someone whose name I couldn’t remember.

Yes, sir, a real sad occasion. Senator Marshall was a real fine man. A real fine senator, Senator. We’ll miss him around here.

I considered jarring him from his placid Minnesota reserve, of saying to him: hey, Bob, or whatever your name is, Eddie wasn’t just a real fine senator, or have you forgotten? He was the very first black senator in our mostly vanilla state. It was incredible that he got elected in a virtually all-white district, as amazing as his escape from Tunica, a small hamlet in the Mississippi Delta. Eddie wasn’t just real fine—for me, he was a miracle. Instead, I nodded, shook the guard’s hand again, and moved slowly, cautiously into the rotunda.

The rotunda is the crossroads on the main level of the Capitol. Most visitors entering it for the first time simply stand and gawk at the cylindrical space that rises to the inside of the dome several stories high. Borrowing freely from the Italian Renaissance and the Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome, Cass Gilbert designed every detail: the inlaid floor, an eight-pointed L’Etoile du Nord—Star of the North—of four different marbles imported from Italy, Greece, Numidia, and the state of Georgia. In the center, another eight-pointed star of brass and frosted glass that drops daylight through the ceiling of Room 15 on the lower level, the largest of many legislative hearing rooms. From any angle, the points of the concentric stars spell M for Minnesota. The walls of the rotunda are lined with elegant, pinkish Kasota limestone from a nearby quarry, providing gallery space for battle flags and plaques honoring Minnesota regiments that fought in the Civil War.

My throat was dry as I reached the edge of the crowd gathered to say goodbye to Eddie. I clasped my hands behind me and peered over the rows of shoulders for a view of the closed casket. I stared at the corner of the American flag draped on top, where the white stars were sewn on the blue field, as if searching for the square, mahogany face of my friend.

You the Boy Wonder, his voice came back to me. You say this bill of yours aint no turkey, and I’ll vote for it. But can I trust you, Boy? ’Times, you get pretty flaky. That bill for some blind Norwegian skiers was a gobbler, I ever see one! That resolution to end the war sure got us into deep shit with the leadership. This going to be like that?

My eyes filled with tears as I imagined his scolding voice, as clearly as if he were by my side. Eddie was blessed with a fine instinct for what could be accomplished in the political arena, exactly when, and how. And while he trusted his intuition in an uncomplicated way, I would analyze and plan and strategize without picking up the little signs, the nonverbal warnings, the latent and deeply entrenched beliefs and values that would determine the outcome. Eddie knew how to work the system, how to use power when he had it, and what to do when he didn’t. My style was to charge straight ahead, with power or without, confident that my logic and energy would overcome any opposition. Was it this sharp contrast that drew us to each other? All I know is, when we worked in concert, blending our diverse talents, we were pretty hard to stop.

Boy, I wish I was as smart as you, he said once, after a stirring debate on the floor of the Senate. You got more good shit in that big head of yours. How you remember all that?

I laughed. Man, maybe I got all that good shit, but you got all the moves.

The rotunda was filling now and the chaplain of the Senate was at the podium. Off to my left was the large plaque commemorating the heroism of the First Regiment of Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, the very first one tendered to President Lincoln after the outbreak of the Civil War. The First Minnesota distinguished itself at both Bull Runs, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Fair Oaks, and—most notably—in stopping Confederate charges on the second and third days of Gettysburg. Straight ahead of me was the showcase for the regiment’s battle flag, shot up during Pickett’s Charge, and what was left of the Second Minnesota’s flag, carried on Sherman’s march through Georgia. Behind the casket where Eddie Marshall lay was one of the two immense stairways leading to the second level, where the house of representatives and senate chambers were located. At the top of the east stairway, of white marble from France, I could see the entrance to the Minnesota Supreme Court, above which was painted a quotation from Daniel Webster: Justice is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together, wherever her temples stand.

After a brief invocation by the chaplain, the majority leader of the Senate stepped to the podium, placed his reading glasses onto his nose, and read the eulogy. He cited the words of Robert F. Kennedy, speaking in Ohio just two months to the day before his assassination in 1968 . . . we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

The majority leader closed with a familiar excerpt from Ted Kennedy’s farewell to his murdered brother. "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

‘Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?’"

Hearing these words again, a tremor rushed through me. Rivulets of tears ran down my neck. On the other side of the casket, faces were wincing and heads shaking, tears being wiped away. Yet for those who hadn’t been seared by the assassinations of the 1960’s, this might have been another political event, a time and place to see and be seen. There were many state legislators in the crowd, and governors, members of Congress, both United States senators—rarely seen together. There were family and friends from Eddie’s private world, and people from the groups he’d fought for during his years in public office. Wedged into that crowd, I felt the grip of what one of our colleagues termed impostor-itis, the sense of not belonging, the shame of living a lie, and the fear of being discovered. What was I doing there, in a place that symbolized a long-ago life? Why had Eddie meant so much to me? What had bound us so firmly together?

We had begun our careers in the Senate as rivals, both vying for the only seat reserved for new members on the prestigious Finance Committee. A prize we both considered worth fighting for. The showdown came at a meeting of the majority caucus. I went first, giving a well prepared sales pitch, detailing my qualifications for the seat. Then Eddie got to his feet, said he knew it was a tough choice, shrugged his shoulders, said he’d respect the good judgment of his fellow senators, and slouched back to his chair. The vote, by secret ballot, was overwhelmingly in his favor. Later, I discovered that while I was preparing my sales pitch, Eddie was quietly lining up the votes.

I shook his hand when the tally was announced, but it took a while to forgive him for whipping me. One day, when one of my bills was about to be killed in Finance Committee, Eddie rescued it and later, at the Vietnamese place that would become our hangout, we got wrecked on rice wine and cut through all the political jive.

Now the gospel choir from Sabathini center in South Minneapolis was singing… I felt a hand gently tugging my sleeve. Turning slowly, I recognized Eddie’s legislative assistant; she’d been with him for years. We gave each other a silent hug, and nodded our heads in unison. Her face was tear-streaked. After exchanging a consoling smile, we released each other as the echo of the choir faded out.

After the ceremony, I worked my way through the crowd of old friends and strangers to Eddie’s widow, Vanessa. She hugged me and held on. Oh, Michael. He was crazy about you. Crazy. She gripped my hands. You two, you were terrific. So glad you’re here!

I was crazy about him too, I said.

She cocked her head. You know, Edward brought a kind of magic to the world.

I nodded. Magic. Eddie liked that word.

Magic and laughter, Vanessa said, regaining her composure. So much, and I was lucky to get some. But I wanted it to last forever. You know? And it didn’t. But I never thought it would end so soon. Wanting it to last forever, was that so foolish?

I said it wasn’t foolish at all, and released her hands. Others were pressing in on us. You take care of yourself.

You’ll be around? she asked, anxiety in her voice.

Of course.

Please don’t leave. I’m having some folks over, afterward. Can you make it?

I’ll be there, I said, not concerned about my afternoon appointments; they could be rescheduled.

Promise?

Yes. Promise.

I turned from Vanessa and Eddie’s casket, sliding through the crowd, and headed for the staircase that leads up to the senate chamber. A place to say my private goodbye to Eddie. At the top of the stairs, I looked back through the eighteen columns of veined Italian marble that surround the west stairwell, amused as I recalled the saga of those enormous columns, arriving from Italy without instructions, or even numbers, so that the builders had to spend weeks rolling them up and down the hill south of the Capitol, trying to imagine what arrangement was intended by the Italian stonecutters.

Senator Burke?

This voice belonged to a short woman with graying dark hair and rimless glasses. I tried to put her face into a familiar context, however long past. In a moment her name, at least her given name, drifted up from the archives. Rachel, I replied, sure enough to risk it, how are you? As I spoke, her last name emerged: Goldin. Her husband was Dick, they had worked on all my campaigns, and together we stood on the steps of this building for the vigil after Martin Luther King was murdered. Rachel Goldin, still serious and still pretty after all these years. But shorter, or so it seemed as I towered over her. In memory, she was standing behind a desk at my campaign headquarters, running the phone bank.

I’ve been a basket case since I heard about Senator Marshall, she said. He was such a good friend of the women’s movement.

How odd that her feeling of loss seemed so impersonal, abstract, and linked to Eddie’s political legacy. What might she say if I dropped dead suddenly? I caught myself. Hadn’t some of my own feelings been abstract? Vanessa was holding onto the magic, Rachel onto the Equal Rights Amendment. We all have our ways to getting through the pain.

Dick and I were just talking about you, she said.

Should my ears be burning?

She barely laughed. Not at all. It was just the night before we heard about Senator Marshall. We were wondering what ever became of you. It’s been a long time, ages, hasn’t it?

I nodded. Yes, it’s been a few years. But at that moment, Rachel Goldin running the phone bank seemed like just yesterday.

And have things gone well for you, Senator? she asked.

There was a caretaking nuance in her voice. Michael, I replied.

Yes, Michael. Have they?

A simple question. Now her voice was softer, empathetic. She must have heard from the rumor mill that the bottom had fallen out of my life, that my second marriage had also collapsed, that I lost my son—except for visitation rights spelled out in the divorce decree. And that I had a couple of front-page DWI’s. So I hedged. Things have gone all right for me, Rachel. ’Course, not all rosy and sunny, but I can’t complain. I wasn’t ready to come all the way down from the pedestal.

She brightened even before I finished, as if she really wanted to believe, no matter what she’d been hearing, that all was well with me. Tell me, do you miss this?

I raised my hands and replied with candor. All this? No, don’t miss being a senator. I do miss the people, the friendships— I stopped, feeling a resurgence of pain over Eddie. I imagined his silhouette in the doorway of my office, his gruff voice insisting we cut out and get some food. Ribs or Vietnamese, Boy?

Oh, yes, Michael. You had so many friends, Rachel said. Just the other night, Dick said, ‘You know, Michael Burke should have been United States Senator, or at least governor. He was headed for the top.’ When Dick said that, I remembered that’s exactly what we expected. You truly were headed for the very top.

Her words were a jarring reminder of promise unfulfilled. I caught myself being seduced again by what might have been, and climbed back into the present. Tell me, how is Dick? I asked.

She smiled, as if to recognize my tactical dodge that led us back to safer ground, and reached up to touch my shoulder. Dick’s just fine. Even stopped smoking. He jogs now. Looks just great. And our Ricky—well, he’s Rick now, and he’s made such a remarkable recovery.

What happened? I remembered Ricky, thin and serious, pounding in lawn signs for one of my campaigns.

You remember he went to Vietnam?

Yes?

An awful experience, like so many, Rachel said, her voice dropping. Had a terrible time coming back. We went through hell with him ’til he finally got help. It’s five years now since he went through treatment. Going on six. He’s married now, has a little girl.

Well, congratulations!

Yes, I’m a grandmother. Her eyes filled with tears. He still has the nightmares. His platoon was—just kids—not good to dwell on it. It’s over now, right? But what insanity! What an awful price to pay, to learn the same old lesson all over again. Why did we have to lose all those kids?

Tears were angling down her face, darkened by eye liner. I felt empty and sad, but not just for Rachel and Dick and their son. I tried to comfort her, reaching out with both arms. She let me hold her and put her head on my chest.

Well, if we hadn’t tried to stop it, I said, it could have been much worse. Her head was nodding. Maybe we won’t have to learn the lesson again, I added, trying to put our experience in the most redemptive context.

Rachel pulled her head back, holding me at arm’s length. Maybe you’re right, she said, none of our kids are getting killed in Vietnam any more. I guess we did what we could, didn’t we?

I nodded.

Well, you certainly did, Michael. You and Senator Marshall. You helped thousands of people. Battered women. Migrant farm workers. Older people. Kids in the inner city wanting to go to college. Rachel had regained the cutting edge of her advocacy. We haven’t forgotten those things, Michael.

I thanked her, shrugging off the hearts and flowers. As I remember, I said, we didn’t have a choice. In those days, there was no choice. We just did what we had to.

I stood alone at the entrance to the senate chamber. Cass Gilbert had left no detail to chance. Marble columns and doorways, elegant arches on all four sides, gilded flowers throughout the chamber, and across the domed ceiling the classical idealism of two enormous murals: Granary of the World and Source of the Mississippi. And way up high, light descended from the smaller dome on the western wing of the Capitol into the space where the Senate did its business.

The chamber was deserted. With only a few of the lights on, it was like a fantasy theatre. People would say, the Senate was like show business. Short bursts of tension and excitement, and long periods of boredom. Conflict and resolution. Eloquence and petty squabbles. Now, in silence, the chamber was like a crypt for bright and tawdry spirits alike, that once made it come alive. I wanted it to come alive again for me and Eddie. Wanted to sit once more behind his bear-like shape, enjoying his playful gestures, swapping jibes with him, and hearing that raspy laugh again. I loved being here with Eddie.

When things were slow on the senate floor, he and I would lean back in our fat, leather swivel-chairs, looking up at the balcony above the president’s desk in the front of the chamber, looking up at the steep rows of maroon seats glowing under the skylight. We’d scan the crowd for the faces of constituents, lobbyists, friends, adversaries, and strangers. We’d watch teachers with their fidgety civics classes, and somber folks from the small German and Scandinavian towns, pointing out their own senator, pleased if their local boy was on his feet speaking, their champion, and disappointed if he was not in the chamber at all. Eddie and I became adept at guessing where people were from, simply noting which of the senators was on his feet, showing off for the folks from home, waxing eloquent with a special bill for his senate district, shamelessly promoting events back home: Dandelion Days, Duck Duck Days, Rumdum Days, and Oktoberfest. When their folks left, the senators would go back to the retiring room behind the president’s desk, for senators only, where they’d smoke, read their mail and The Wall Street Journal, and play cutthroat cribbage and gin rummy.

Those folks must be from Bertha, Eddie growled one day. A tiny burg in Northwestern Minnesota.

Stay awake, Senator, I warned him, those folks is from your district.

He turned and scowled, looking over the tops of his glasses. Bull shit. Folks is from Bertha.

I shook my head. Sure looks like folks from your district.

Now he rested his arm on the front of my mahogany desk. Boy, if they’re from my district, you gonna see me on my feet, carrying on like a damn fool. You got that, Boy?

On that same balcony, Julia Vanelli came into my life. It was her first day covering the Senate for the Duluth News Tribune. She was so new that she hadn’t yet found the area below the clerk’s desk that was set aside for the press. I watched her walk down the aisle and cross her legs in the front row. She was facing directly toward me and Eddie.

Check that, he said, without turning in his chair.

Don’t tell me she’s from Bertha, I replied, watching the poised, dark haired woman take a notepad from a large black bag.

No, looks like one of those Republican cake-eaters, said Eddie. He leaned back and gave me a foxy smile. Might be one of your suburban folks, Boy, down here to check up on you. Too much class for my district.

Well, she had my attention. Was she a new lobbyist for the League of Women Voters or some other good government group? That would explain her evident curiosity about the most ordinary events of that day on the senate floor. I was charmed by her head thrust back laughing when Senator Orville Bergstrom, who enjoyed teasing the big city senators, pulled a dead chicken out of a paper bag and waved it over his head during a brief skirmish over an agriculture bill. Though she was too far away for me to be certain, it felt as if our eyes were wandering in and out of contact.

And yes, I remember showing off for her that day, just as dishonorably as Orville with his dead chicken. I used some of the voice and body signals that were honed in my campaigns, as ingrained as the moves of a Broadway actor after a year of performances. A trifle too slick. Too smooth. I called a page to my desk, and sent her up to the balcony with a cryptic note. Something like: Isn’t this exciting? Coffee in the rotunda?

I saw her read my note, and laugh. Her note came back: Best offer of the day, but no thanks.

Know what, Boy? Eddie said, after watching us like a hawk. You just bad! Hustling that lady on taxpayers’ time. For shame, Senator! We broke into laughter so loud the president banged his gavel and admonished us to respect the decorum of the Senate. Right, Eddie whispered, that’s what this place needs. More dee-cor-um!

When the dark haired stranger with the notepad failed to reappear in the senate chamber the next day, I began to look for her in the hallways of the Capitol and in the hearing rooms where my committees met. By the time she showed up in my office a week later, to interview me for the News Tribune, she’d grown so in my imagination that I would have succumbed even if she had been a Republican cake-eater.

Our affair was fast and dizzying. Sad to say, so terribly easy. Way too fast. We were together, intensely, for nearly two years, and when she left me, it was as if my life stopped. I should have known better, but in the rush I’d thoroughly idealized our relationship and discounted our substantial differences. My whole life then felt like a huge rush, and perhaps I just grasped this romantic counterpart to my simmering political fervor. But Julia wanted more. She wasn’t willing to be wedged into my complicated life.

I feel used, she said one night near the end of it.

I’m not using you, I replied.

She came back quickly. I feel used. You aren’t listening, Michael. It’s like you gave our relationship a big burst of energy at the beginning, like one of your campaigns. But once I was in your pocket, once you got the deal done, you returned to what really matters.

I’m not using you, I insisted. I love you. You matter a lot. I need you, Julia.

She pulled back. I get scared when I hear that. I don’t want to be needed. The more you need something, the less chance you’ll get it.

I love you, I repeated, feeling the tide of her withdrawal. I reached out, clasping my hand on her knee.

Michael, Michael. I love you too. And I know you. I know right now you’ll say anything you think might change my mind.

I denied it, but I remember that after our eyes had been engaged for quite a while, I lowered mine first. I shrugged my shoulders and bit my lip. I wanted to cry but smiled instead. Julia was right, I would try any trick to keep her. And I did try, but none of them worked. I was still too immersed in my own to recognize how much pain I was causing her.

For a long time, I clung to the notion that if Julia had stayed, my life would have been wonderful. I would have avoided years of confused odyssey. But after a while, with help from a therapist, I was able to see that while I was scrambling to get to the top of the political heap, nobody could have been wedged into my life. Julia and I had been seduced by each other at a time when most of us, finally old enough, were raucously tossing aside the placid, orderly life our parents had designed for us in the aftermath of World War II. It was a time when every event, however ordinary, seemed to vibrate with a kind of cosmic significance, when every small injustice cried out for redress, and every sudden infatuation seemed the apotheosis of romance. In another time, Julia and I might have become friends or we might have touched each other briefly, inconclusively, then gone our separate ways. Years later, I could understand a woman’s reluctance to be wedged into a man’s life, but not back then.

I remember how, early in our time together, Julia blasted me and Eddie. You guys need to slow down, she scolded, exasperated by our headlong charge onto a