The Senator’s Wife (novel excerpt) by Sonja Srinivasan
PART I
1959
I
It was a city founded on freedom, raised on decorum, and bolstered by propriety. One’s family name was the currency, and for those who did not come from established kin personal reputation rested upon appearances. The whole country converged here, from all corners of the continent: Maine, Florida, California, and Washington state, even from the new additions that would extend the American Empire far beyond the reaches of the mainland–Alaska and Hawaii. There was a jet plane that could take you across the Atlantic in less than eight hours, and the scientists planned launches of spacecraft to take America beyond the stratosphere and to the moon.
People arrived by trains that burrowed into Union Station. There clicked the footsteps of men in pressed gray suits. There clicked the conductor’s ticket punch as he welcomed passengers aboard. And there clicked the burgundy heels of an elegant woman walking across the tile whose matching purse was of the same make as one Princess Grace wore in a magazine photograph. The woman pulled out a ticket: Platform 6 for the 10:25 to New York.
But once she reached the platform, the train was not there. “Excuse me, sir,” she said to a man next to her. Her voice was low and breathy, a cat’s purr. “Do you know why the train is not there? It’s always on time.”
Before she could say more, there was a mass migration of passengers heading in one direction, loud voices and shrieks rising above the din. A station agent was shouting, directing people to Platform 8. “This way, ma’am, step right this way for New York!”
“What happened?” she asked.
The agent looked her up and down, the elegant pink sylph amidst the suits and dowdy matrons. “Never mind, ma’am, don’t want you to trouble your pretty little head with bad things,” he pointed to the correct platform, and continued shouting out directions.
“Yes, of course, thank you.” She walked as quickly as she could to the train, given the confines of her pencil skirt. Slim and blue-eyed, the woman attracted admiring looks as she headed now to Platform 8. When she reached the first-class carriage, a porter helped her up, took her small brown leather travel case, and then placed it on the rack overhead. She tipped him and took her seat, peering out the window to discover more about the hubbub. With a delicate touch from her red-manicured hands, she took off her short jacket and unpinned the pillbox hat, neatly placing them by her side. And though her black hair was done in a chignon neatly tucked in the back of her head, a stray curl just would try to escape.
The train’s whistle sounded, and the conductor bellowed all the stops. Thank God she was getting out of town, leaving her husband in the care of their housekeeper for a few days. He would be in session most of the time, debating the interminable stream of budgets or bills or policies. She was afraid of anything that might detain her in the station, keep her from her destination that cared nothing of senatorial sessions or lobbying lawyers. New York was a city that paid no regard to anything but appetite.
The train jerked into motion, jolting her out of her reflective mood. Something stirred within her, a sense of delight. The train’s horn punctuated the engine’s acceleration. Goodbye D.C., it seemed to say, goodbye white monoliths, goodbye formal avenues with neatly ordered buses and cars, goodbye green lawns manicured to the last inch. Hello, New York, with your thrusting skyscrapers and pulsing energy and infernal subways screeching to a halt, depositing passengers into malodorous subterranean stations.
She took out a book from her purse, a novel by a young writer named Updike. She had bookmarked her last page in the novel with a photo of her son and a pale pink birthday card embossed with a rose, scented with rosewater. In a neat hand in blue ink, it read,
Darling Anna,
Happy birthday to you! I hope the flowers arrived on time and not wilted. You said you were bored out of your mind, why not come up here for a visit? Joe will be at work–as always–but at least you and I and the kids can enjoy some time together. You love New York and you’ve only come to visit us once! There’s so much more to see here than in D.C. Come anytime that’s convenient for you.
Love,
Dorothy
Anna was so engrossed in rereading the card that she did not hear the woman. “Sorry to bother you again, honey. May I sit here? I barely made the train.”
“Oh, yes, yes of course,” Anna tucked her sister-in-law’s card back into the book and placed her jacket and hat on her lap.
“Whew! Got on board. Well, isn’t that just pretty?” the woman said in a strong Virginia accent, admiring Anna’s jacket as she fingered the nubby tweed. “You’re a real lady of style. I’m Mrs. Campbell.”
“Anna. Thank you,” she said, opening her novel.
“You got any kids?” asked the woman, pulling out a cheese sandwich and offering Anna half.
“No, thank you,” Anna said. Unfortunately, the small black-and-white photograph of a little boy of four, with neatly combed thick, dark hair, long-lashed green eyes, and a naughty, dimpled smile fell out of her book.
Mrs. Campbell swooped and picked it up off the floor. “He certainly looks like you. Although of course, I've never seen his father.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have–” Anna began, and then stopped herself, not wanting to reveal her identity.
“Where? Is he somebody famous?!”
“Robert Kernan,” Anna turned to her book.
“Well, God bless you–you’re the congressman's wife! It must be so nice being married to such a wonderful man. Such a good Christian!”
“That’s certainly how he thinks of himself."
“Is it true he’s going to run for Senate next year? They say he’ll oust McKenna.”
Anna felt the heat rise to her cheeks but offered that polite, sugary smile she had used from the moment she set foot at the altar. “Oh, I can’t keep track of everything my husband does, I barely know when he’s coming home for dinner!” she forced a laugh.
The train rolled through the outskirts of Washington, the gleaming steel rails shuddering beneath the heavy wheels. When the conductor came to punch their tickets, the garrulous Mrs. Campbell was mercifully ejected for sitting in the wrong class of carriage.
Anna stared out the window at the green fields that lined the tracks and then up at the sky. If only she had Sean with her so she could take him to the zoo in Central Park, show him the animals and buy him popcorn and soda, watch him marvel at the skyscrapers and ask how tall they were! She thought of his silky arms, cheeks like smooth pillows as he cuddled up to her when she read him a bedtime story. He loved books, too. “One more, Mommy,” he would murmur, as she looked down at him, half asleep against her chest, his body draped across her lap.
She could not wait to see the museums and try dumplings in Chinatown and chat with Dorothy and play with the children and look for a dress to wear to Kelly’s debutante ball. The passengers that got on at the different stops were of a different kind: more talkative with clipped accents and a sense that not a moment of time could be wasted. And finally, the conductor bellowed: “New York City!”
II
Sitting in the back of her brother’s car, driven to Long Island by his chauffeur Matthew, she watched the streets pass by. Everything outside was a theater of life: that man on the street might be a famous scientist from Japan, that elegant woman with the little white dog, a Jewish grandmother who had fled to America during the war. Street vendors proffered hot, meaty sandwiches from colorful carts, and on the corner, a small truck unloaded crates of champagne. Even the air was different in New York; while some people complained it was polluted, to Anna, it was the perfume of freedom.
She rapped on the window that separated her from Matthew to ask why Joe hadn't come to pick her up himself, but Matthew was too focused on the traffic to respond. When she arrived at Dorothy and Joe's mansion, there would be a comfortable room with chintz-covered walls and a hot bath, and nieces and nephews to play with, and Dorothy’s company, cheerful family life to keep her entertained. She could not help but smile when she saw the East River below the bridge, the boats with their wakes trailing behind, people enjoying a day of pleasure away from work or sightseeing. And when she looked out the back window, the skyscrapers behind her provided a stunning backdrop, each room or office holding a cast of characters whose unfolding stories Anna wanted desperately to know. She removed her hat and her pumps, and a moment later, flexed her toes and stretched her legs out on the back seat, longing to feel the sand; she would coax Dorothy and the children to run out to the beach.
When she awoke, the scenery had changed to green trees and narrow roads. She rapped on the glass and slid it open. “Excuse me, Matthew, but it’s very strange that Joe isn’t here. He usually picks me up,” she began.
Matthew drew a deep breath through pursed lips. “Well, ma’am. . .” he made a sheepish grimace.
“Ah, there’s trouble! But please tell me, what happened?
Matthew said nothing.
“Do tell me. I won’t let on that I know.”
“I don’t know if I should, it’s not my position to–”
“It’s something Joe has done, I know it! Oh dear, should I really be coming? Or maybe I can help Dorothy.”
“Well, ma’am, what I heard was this…”
The once-happy family of the Jankowskis was happy no more. Everything had gone amok at their Long Island mansion ever since Dorothy had found proof that Joe was having an affair. The whole household got word, from Matthew to the housekeeper to the cook to the gardener. The five children ran wild, eating cookies for breakfast and playing with kitchen utensils and knives, wearing their Sunday best that they stained with jelly and lemonade, for Dorothy had locked herself in her room, and Joseph Jankowski had encamped to his office apartment in the city. The cook gave her two days’ notice, and the interior decorator stopped painting the dining room, leaving one wall half-white and half-lilac.
Sonja Srinivasan holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Warren Wilson program. She has published the stories “The Mathematician’s Daughter,” “Almahdi,” (both from Alma Mater, a manuscript of stories set at a fictitious university) and “In-Flight Entertainment,” which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sonja writes a non-fiction blog, thewomenofletters.com, on arts and social issues. An opera singer and polyglot, she is also a graduate of Stanford and Columbia Universities and has attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference twice. She is currently revising The Senator’s Wife, a novel retelling of Anna Karenina.