She almost wouldn't let me write about her. She finally agreed, but only after I vowed to cut her lawn. That's no joke.
First, I had to promise I wouldn't give away much information about her identity. Then, I had to edge her sidewalk.
Her lawn-man had bronchitis.
“Well," she said. "As a little girl I wanted to be famous. I wanted see something big, to get out of a small town and see stuff. I used clip out pictures of exotic places and hang them in my room.”
She's silver-haired now, her left hip is a wreck, but she has terrific posture. And she looks stately in her pearls.
As it happened, fame wasn't so hard to accomplish. She studied hard, attended college, then found a job selling makeup on television. There, she married a man. He wanted notoriety too. To be a politician.
Which is like fame, only filthier.
Before she knew it, she was traveling back and forth, shaking the right hands, kissing babies, mumbling inspiring things.
“He started off a good man,”
she said. “Wanted to change things. In the sixties, he had ideas for water-treatment that would've changed everything. He was, 'green,' before there was such a word. Fought for equality, too.”
But ideals don't last in politics. They're like candlesticks in a hurricane.
“Everyone shot him down,” she went on. “Too many people offered him too much money to push bad ideas. So, one day, I think he just started playing their game.”
They went to parties, she wore white gloves. They ate at fancy restaurants, she used the right forks. They rode convertibles in parades, she waved to crowds. They slept in separate bedrooms—sometimes his secretaries spent nights in his.
She faded inside.
“I don't think people know what goes on in that world. It's a crooked way to make a living. It's worse now. I remember when he and his buddy..."
Let's…