Eleanor had gathered from Patty’s annual Christmas letter that after his many terms in Congress as an increasingly vocal voice of “family values,” Matt had recently been elected to the Senate. Patty acknowledged, in the letter, that her brother’s politics seemed a little far to the right for her taste. But it was all just politics, she said. “You know my brother,” she wrote at the bottom of the letter, in the part of her message meant for Eleanor alone. “All he really believes in is money and beer.”
Eleanor was washing the dishes when Matt Hallinan’s voice came on the radio as that week’s guest on a show calledTalk of the Nation.“There’s been a lot of talk about Senator Hallinan lately,” the host of the program announced. “Some movers and shakers in Washington are mentioning him as a contender for the number-two spot on the ticket, next time out.”
Matt would be in his late fifties now, but Eleanor knew from the Hallinan family Christmas card that she still received every year that he was still reasonably fit, with a smiling wife and a couple of attractive clean-cut blond children. If he were chosen to run on the Republican ticket for vice president, of course, he’d be in a great position forthe top spot, down the line. “So what do you think about that idea, Senator?” the host asked him. “Is the White House in your sights?”
If Darla were still alive, this would have been the kind of moment that would have inspired Eleanor to pick up the phone and call her, knowing there was at least one person on the planet who would understand the feelings that suggestion brought forth in her, the image of President Hallinan. As it was, she just picked up a Brillo pad—scrubbing harder than necessary.
“I’d be honored and humbled,” he said. “I’ll serve the American people in any way I’m called to serve. If that includes the White House, so be it.”
The host of the program was asking him something about his political philosophy now.
“Some people may call me a dinosaur,” he said. “But for me, it all goes back to the traditional values I was raised on. Love of country. Love of family. Love of God.
“Americans are losing sight of the strong moral values of our forefathers,” he went on. “Drugs. Divorce. Gays in the military. Children left in day care while their moms collect welfare and unemployment. Liberals are turning us into a nation of crybabies. We’ve got men who wake up one morning and decide they’re going to be a woman, women deciding to be men. You never know who you’re going to run into anymore, when you walk into a public restroom.”
“Of all the issues facing America today,” the host asked Matt Hallinan, “what, for you, is the most serious?”
“We’ve got thousands of babies being murdered in our country every day,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t sleep at night, just thinking about them.”
Hearing his voice—surprisingly familiar, after all these years—had a more disturbing effect on Eleanor than she would have anticipated. She was back in the summer of 1969. The front seat of his car.
Matt Hallinan’s breath on her face, his fingers pinching her nipples. Her skirt around her waist, her underpants around her ankles.
And later, the trip to Poughkeepsie. The back room. The five hundred dollars. The silent drive back to her dormitory as blood soaked the sanitary napkin between her legs.
It was a call-in show. More than once, they’d announced the phone number. “If you’ve got a question or a comment for our guest,” the host was saying, “now’s your chance. Come on, listeners, let Senator Hallinan hear from you.”
Eleanor stood frozen at the sink, staring at the radio. She pictured Matt Hallinan as he had been all those years back, a bored frat boy going to summer school and figuring out how to cheat his way into law school.
“Crybabies.” Maybe that was the term Matt Hallinan chose for every human being who ever acknowledged pain or struggle about something other than his team not making it to the Super Bowl.
She thought about Toby, bent over the Richard Scarry book, working so hard to relearn the words for every single thing he used to know. Harry Botts, sharing a beer with Jerry Henderson after a game—Jerry laughing, as he took a swig. “You don’t have AIDS or anything, do you?” Darla and all those years of cleaning houses, hiding her cash in a secret bank account to make her getaway, and finally managing to pull it off. Packing that U-Haul with everything she was able to salvage from her old life for the new one she’d believed she was just beginning. Only taking as much as she could get out of the trailer while Bobby was at work. Standing at the gas pump as she had that night and turning around to see him standing there—the man she’d been trying to get away from for over twenty years, Bobby. With a gun he’d picked up at a Walmart.
Most of all, Eleanor thought about what Al must have endured—Al, presented with his grandmother’s annual gift of a ruffled dress, Al, making the decision to transition from the sex he was born with to the gender he was meant to be. For a moment there, she took in the full weight of Al’s courage. She felt something like physical pain, imagining how it would be for her son, hearing Matt Hallinan’s words now.
Another picture then: Matt Hallinan, pushing her underpants down around her ankles, whispering into her ear.One small step for man.
“We’re waiting for your call,” the host said again. Eleanor picked up her phone.
She drew in her breath. This time it wasn’t the old pattern—that familiar feeling she always got, entering Crazyland, of stepping offthe edge of the world. Eleanor was surprisingly calm as she dialed the number. No doubt hundreds of people were calling in. She’d never get through.
A minute later, there was a voice on the other end. “You’ve reachedTalk of the Nation,” the woman said. “Where are you calling from?”
“Brookline, Massachusetts.” She gave her first name, all they asked for.
“And do you have a question for our guest?” Before she had time to consider this, she was on the air.
“You should remember me, Senator Hallinan,” she said. “The summer I was sixteen, I stayed with your family and you used to give me rides to work. I thought you were like a big brother.”
Off in the studio someplace in Washington, she could feel his discomfort. Matt Hallinan must have been thinking fast, figuring out how to finesse the situation, but Eleanor wasn’t done talking.
“At that time,” she said, “you were trying to figure out a way to get out of going to Vietnam. As I recall, you were going to hire someone to take an exam for you, to get into law school. But that wasn’t the main thing I remember about those rides, Matt. It’s what happened in the car...”
He was trying to cut in now. “I don’t know who this person is,” he said. “I guess you get a lot of crazies on this show.”
“I was your sister Patty’s roommate at school. I think you know that. My parents had just died in a car accident.”
From her kitchen in Brookline, Eleanor spoke into her cell phone. Her voice was steady.
