She paused, wiped her face. “Oh, hell, call it inspiration, if you will.”
“Mary, that’s the most one-sided—”
“Shut up. Can’t you ever listen?” The fury was returning to her voice. “I was at those campaign rallies at the Club 250, John. Tonight—now, after it’s all over—look me straight in the eye and tell me we weren’t staring down the throat of a Ku Klux Klan in the making.”
Her shoulders shivered. “I always felt like taking a shower afterward. Would have, too, if the hot water hadn’t been rationed. God, those animals. ‘No dogs and Germans allowed.’ ‘Pale niggers.’ ‘I got nuthin’ ‘gainst no Kraut—ev’ry Murikan should own one.’ That’s what they were saying in the crowd, John, it doesn’t matter what fine words you were spouting from the speaker’s platform.”
Simpson swallowed. He’d hated those rallies, himself. But, given Stearns’ savage and relentless campaign, he’d had no choice—
He groped for . . . something. “Damn it, his program and policies were incredibly reckless. Without our traditions, our customs, letting tens of thousands of Germans—I don’t care about their so-called ‘race,’ it’s got nothing to do with that and you know it—let them have the franchise—swamping us under with their medieval attitudes and superstitions—God knows what they’d do with it . . .”
The words petered off. Mary laughed drily.
“Yes? And then what? What have they done with it?” She glanced at the bare wall, and managed a smile. “Having no pictures up isn’t really the end of the world, you know. It’s been two years now, John. And if the man was wrong about a lot of things—and I think he was, and still do—he wasn’t wrong about that. He may have screwed up around the fringes, but he didn’t screw up at the core. Did he? Whatever else this new United States is and may become, at least it’s nothing we or anybody else needs to be ashamed of. And—be honest, John—are you so sure you’d be able to say the same thing today, if you’d been running the show?”
He tried to say it, but . . . couldn’t. Quite.
“Terror is a horrible thing, John,” she said softly. “A monster, if it’s set loose. Much less if it’s whipped up. And I think, no matter how hard you tried, you wouldn’t have been able to control it. Not after you’d done everything you could to ride terror into power. Which—to be blunt—is exactly what you tried to do.”
Again, she wiped her face. “Yes, yes, me too. I’m not trying to put the blame on you, John. Just . . . oh, fuck it.”
The profanity jolted him. Mary was usually fastidious in her use of words. More than anything, in fact, it had been Rita Stearns’ unthinking use of profanity—and the way it seemed to have infected Tom—which had so instantly turned Mary’s prejudice against their son’s fiancée into unyielding opposition to the marriage.
Suddenly, they were both laughing. Almost hysterically, in fact—Simpson himself as much as Mary. Some of that was his own relief at the realization that his marriage was going to survive. But as much—even Simpson could understand it—because the laughter would let him release all errors. Wash them away into the past, without ever actually having to come right out and . . .
Admit it.
“All right, Mary,” he said after the laughter died down. “Tell me what you want.”
She sat down next to him and took his hands in hers. “I want us back, John. I want my life back. I want our son back, if we can manage it. You’ve had your work with the Navy to keep you going. I’ve had nothing.”
He nodded, acknowledging the truth of that. “I’ll do—”
“Oh, shut up!” This time, though, the snapped words were friendly, not hostile. “John, you don’t have to do anything. Well . . . not quite. I’m going to need you to call in the favor Mike Stearns put in your bank account.”
She laughed at the stiffness in his face. “Come on. Whatever else he is, the man’s as slick a politician as you’ll ever meet. That much ought to be obvious to anyone with half a brain—especially you, Mr. Black and Blue All Over and Still Wondering What Truck Ran Over Him.”