Democracy by Joan Didion Page B

Jack Lovett reached for his seersucker jacket and put it on and Inez watched him. She could hear Janet telling Jessie and Adlai about the goat milk in the coconut milk punches. “It’s part of the exaggerated politeness these people have,” Janet said. “They’ll never admit they didn’t understand you. That would imply you didn’t speak clearly, a no-no.”
    “Either that or he didn’t have any coconut milk,” Jack Lovett said.
    Frances did not have any application to this moment on this porch and neither did Janet.
    Inez closed her eyes.
    “We should go back down,” she said finally. “I think we should go back down.”
    “I bet you think that would be the ‘correct thing,’ ” Jack Lovett said. “Don’t you. Miss Manners.”
    Inez sat perfectly still. Through the open door she could see Janet coming toward the porch.
    Jack Lovett stood up. “We’ve still got it,” he said. “Don’t we.”
    “Got what,” Janet said as she came outside.
    “Nothing,” Inez said.
    “Plenty of nothing,” Jack Lovett said.
    Janet looked from Jack Lovett to Inez.
    Inez thought that Janet would tell her story about the coconut milk punches but Janet did not. “Don’t you dare run off together and leave me in Jakarta with Frances,” Janet said.
    That was 1969. Inez Victor saw Jack Lovett only twice again between 1969 and 1975, once at a large party in Washington and once at Cissy Christian’s funeral in Honolulu. For some months after the evening on the porch of the bungalow at Puncak it had seemed to Inez that she might actually leave Harry Victor, might at least separate herself from him in a provisional way—rent a small studio, say, or make a discreet point of not going down to Washington, and of being at Amagansett when he was in New York—and for a while she did, but only between campaigns.
    Surely you remember Inez Victor campaigning.
    Inez Victor smiling at a lunch counter in Manchester, New Hampshire, her fork poised over a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.
    Inez Victor smiling at the dedication of a community center in Madison, Wisconsin, her eyes tearing in the bright sun because it had been decided that she looked insufficiently congenial in sunglasses.
    Inez Victor speaking her famous Spanish at a street festival in East Harlem. Buenos días , Inez Victor said on this and other such occasions. Yo estoy muy contenta a estar aquí hoy con mi esposo . In twenty-eight states and at least four languages Inez Victor said that she was very happy to be here today with her husband. In twenty-eight states she also said, usually in English but in Spanish for La Opinión in Los Angeles and for La Prensa in Miami, that the period during which she and her husband were separated had been an important time of renewal and rededication for each of them ( vida nueva , she said for La Opinión , which was not quite right but since the reporter was only humoring Inez by conducting the interview in Spanish he got the drift) and had left their marriage stronger than ever. Oh shit, Inez, Jack Lovett said to Inez Victor in Wahiawa on the thirtieth of March, 1975. Harry Victor’s wife.

3
    A ERIALISTS know that to look down is to fall.
    Writers know it too.
    Look down and that prolonged spell of suspended judgment in which a novel is written snaps, and recovery requires that we practice magic. We keep our attention fixed on the wire, plan long walks, solitary evenings, measured drinks at sundown and careful meals at careful hours. We avoid addressing the thing directly during the less propitious times of day. We straighten our offices, arrange and rearrange certain objects, talismans, props. Here are a few of the props I have rearranged this morning.
    Object (1): An old copy of Who ’ s Who , open to Harry Victor’s entry.
    Object (2): A framed cover from the April 21, 1975, issue of Newsweek , a black-and-white photograph showing the American ambassador to Cambodia, John Gunther Dean, leaving Phnom Penh with the flag