[Character Sketch] Nucky Thompson
Word Count: 451, references A Return to Normalcy
"For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it.” -Robert Penn Warren
There was a moment in the car ride home from the election party when Nucky almost believed things were going to be fine. Margaret and he had stared out across the ocean for almost an hour, unheeding of the well wishers and dying revelry behind them as they studied the waves come slowly in until both their eyes burned and the cab was hailed to take them home. She rested against him; from fatigue and not affection and in silence they rode.
He thought of Jimmy and Eli; and their absence in Babette’s. In the morning he’d call Angela to check on him just not too carefully because he knew the boy liked working girls. The irony of that never failed to amuse Nucky: for all the hatred he had for his father’s treatment of his mother- at least the Commodore had never paid her. He kept her yes, but with all the grace of a quadroon mistress which was a lot more then Jimmy ever gave his whores. As for Eli, a few days of quiet brooding, the nursing of the tantrum and things would return to normal once the money came in to remind him how well they had things.
It wasn’t perfect, Nucky knew that more than anyone else; but it made them all wealthy men and with this election in pocket; they had connections as far reaching as DC. With the baseball business finally killed too he even had Arnold Rothstein- King of the Gamblers- owing him a favor. This should have been a good night for him; the best night.
Instead he thought of Mabel, and the lesson she left him with one night with his shaving razor. There wasn’t going to be any joy he received that didn’t come with a greater price, no triumph without lost that would leave him reeling. There was a part of him that knew rationally, in the end she’d been so far removed from the world she couldn’t have known what she was doing. But part of him knew she knew, because it was the one she could make certain he would never forget; no matter how many people owed him favors or who they were, and no matter how full the coffers were.
It was her last words to him, and the last curse. Every victory he would receive would be tainted; doubled edged. Just as the night he was delivered Atlantic City on a silver platter found him returned home to a bloodied and cold wife so to, would the country nod deference to a Nucky Thompson who found neither brother nor ‘son’ there, and a woman at his side only there for comfort and not affection.
"For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it.” -Robert Penn Warren
There was a moment in the car ride home from the election party when Nucky almost believed things were going to be fine. Margaret and he had stared out across the ocean for almost an hour, unheeding of the well wishers and dying revelry behind them as they studied the waves come slowly in until both their eyes burned and the cab was hailed to take them home. She rested against him; from fatigue and not affection and in silence they rode.
He thought of Jimmy and Eli; and their absence in Babette’s. In the morning he’d call Angela to check on him just not too carefully because he knew the boy liked working girls. The irony of that never failed to amuse Nucky: for all the hatred he had for his father’s treatment of his mother- at least the Commodore had never paid her. He kept her yes, but with all the grace of a quadroon mistress which was a lot more then Jimmy ever gave his whores. As for Eli, a few days of quiet brooding, the nursing of the tantrum and things would return to normal once the money came in to remind him how well they had things.
It wasn’t perfect, Nucky knew that more than anyone else; but it made them all wealthy men and with this election in pocket; they had connections as far reaching as DC. With the baseball business finally killed too he even had Arnold Rothstein- King of the Gamblers- owing him a favor. This should have been a good night for him; the best night.
Instead he thought of Mabel, and the lesson she left him with one night with his shaving razor. There wasn’t going to be any joy he received that didn’t come with a greater price, no triumph without lost that would leave him reeling. There was a part of him that knew rationally, in the end she’d been so far removed from the world she couldn’t have known what she was doing. But part of him knew she knew, because it was the one she could make certain he would never forget; no matter how many people owed him favors or who they were, and no matter how full the coffers were.
It was her last words to him, and the last curse. Every victory he would receive would be tainted; doubled edged. Just as the night he was delivered Atlantic City on a silver platter found him returned home to a bloodied and cold wife so to, would the country nod deference to a Nucky Thompson who found neither brother nor ‘son’ there, and a woman at his side only there for comfort and not affection.