Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [65]
"You’re sure it was my Robert?" said the Commodore.
"Who else but your Robert wears a Goldwater button on his swimming trunks?" asked Boyle.
"You object to his political views?" the Commodore demanded.
"I mention the button as a means of identification. Your son’s politics do not interest the Secret Service. For your information, I have spent seven years protecting the life of a Republican, and three protecting the life of a Democrat," said Boyle.
"For your information, Mr. Boyle," said the Commodore, "Dwight David Eisenhower was not a Republican."
"Whatever he was, I protected him," said Boyle. "He may have been a Zoroastrian, for all I know. And whatever the next President is going to be, I’ll protect him, too. I also protect the lives of persons like your son from the consequences of excessive informality where the Presidential presence is concerned." Now Boyle’s voice really started to cut. It sounded like a bandsaw working on galvanized tin. "I tell you, officially and absolutely unsmilingly now, your son is to cease and desist from using Kennedy boats as love nests."
That got through to the Commodore, bothered him. "Love nests?" he said.
"Your Robert has been meeting a girl on boats all over the harbor," said Boyle. "He arranged to meet her today on the Marlin. He was sure it would be vacant. Adlai Stevenson and Walter Reuther were a shock."
The Commodore was quiet for a few seconds, and then he said, "Mr. Boyle, I resent your implications. If I ever hear of your implying such a thing about my son to anyone else, you had better put your pistol and shoulder holster in your wife’s name, because I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got. My Robert has never gone with a girl he wasn’t proud to introduce to his mother and me, and he never will."
"You’re going to meet this one any minute now," said Boyle. "Robert is on his way home with her."
The Commodore wasn’t tough at all now. He was uneasy and humble when he said, "Would you mind telling me her name?"
"Kennedy, sir," said Boyle, "Sheila Kennedy, fresh over from Ireland, a fourth cousin of the President of the United States."
Robert Taft Rumfoord came in with the girl right after that, and announced they were engaged to be married.
Supper that night in the Rumfoord cottage was sad and beautiful and happy and strange. There were Robert and his girl, and me, and the Commodore and his lady.
That girl was so intelligent, so warm, and so beautiful that she broke my heart every time I looked at her. That was why supper was so peculiar. The girl was so desirable, and the love between her and Robert was so sweet and clean, that nobody could think of anything but silly little things to say. We mainly ate in silence.
The Commodore brought up the subject of politics just once. He said to Robert, "Well—uh—will you still be making speeches around the country, or—uh—"
"I think I’ll get out of politics entirely for a while," said Robert.
The Commodore said something that none of us could understand, because the words sort of choked him.
"Sir?" said Robert.
"I said," said the Commodore, " ’I would think you would.’ "
I looked at the Commodore’s lady, at Clarice. All the lines had gone out of her face. She looked young and beautiful, too. She was completely relaxed for the first time in God-knows-how-many years.
One of the things I said that supper was was sad. The sad part was how empty and quiet it left the Commodore.
The two lovers went for a moonlight sail. The Commodore and his lady and I had brandy on the veranda, on the water side. The sun was down. The tourist traffic had petered out. The fifty-mile hikers who had asked to rest on the lawn that afternoon were still all there, sound asleep, except for one boy who played a guitar. He played it slowly. Sometimes it seemed like a minute between the time he would pluck a string and the time he would pluck one again.
John, the butler, came out and asked the Commodore if it was time to turn on Senator Goldwater’s floodlights yet.
"I think we’ll just leave him off tonight, John," said