(1964) The Man (37 page)

She heard the telephone bang into its cradle, and she started, and then, to her surprise, she found President Dilman appraising her.

“Forgive me for the length of that telephone call, Miss Watson,” he said. “If Alexander Graham Bell had not lived, I guess we’d have anarchy instead of a centralized democratic government today.”

She knew her responding laugh was strained. She said, “It’s kind enough of you to see me at all.”

He had a pencil, and absently drew circles with it on a scratch pad. “Everything you’ve told me up to now, Miss Watson, indicates you possess the right background for this type of work. But I must add, to be perfectly honest, I do have one or two reservations about you.”

She felt stricken, as if sentenced to doom without being told the reason behind it. Desperation made her bolder. “What reservations, Mr. President? Please tell me whatever is on your mind. I feel I’m so perfectly qualified for the position, so right for it, that I can’t imagine—” She threw up her hands helplessly, then remembered the scar and turned her right wrist inward. “I can’t imagine anyone on earth not seeing how useful I could be.”

Dilman made some kind of muttering sound—approving, disapproving of her outburst, she could not judge—and then he said, “Very well, Miss Watson, we don’t have much time, and I must fill this job, and I mustn’t make a mistake. To be specific, my reservations are three. Let me put them before you.”

Sally said, “Yes, please do,” and she held her breath.

“First,” said Dilman, “you’ve skipped around a good deal in your job training and positions—”

“Because I’ve never found what I wanted or what I’m best suited for,” she said quickly. “This is where I belong.”

“Very well. Let us say this is where you belong. The second question is—have you ever served in a position similar to that of White House social secretary?”

“Not exactly, except in my personal life. It’s such a special position, the only one like it in the United States, that I suppose few girls have had experience like that. But I have known most of the White House social secretaries from Miss Laurel back to Miss Tuckerman and Miss Baldridge, and I believe I can bring to the job as much know-how as any of them brought to it, to start with. I can bring you a dossier filled with every kind of endorsement, from Eastern boarding schools to Radcliffe, from Park Avenue editors to the Junior League. I believe I am attractive, well groomed, well dressed, with the best of breeding and manners. I have imagination, taste, adaptability. I know how to handle and direct correspondence, plan and conduct an informal luncheon or a formal dinner, oversee the housekeeper while she manages the help. I’ve done this, Mr. President, I’ve done it for my father, ever since my mother divorced him. My stepmother has never been good at this, and I am, so I’ve done it. You know how long my father has been in the Senate. He is acquainted with everyone and everyone knows him, and we’ve been visited by princes, maharajahs, ambassadors, millionaires, and astronauts, and I’ve entertained for most of them. You are acquainted with my father. Call him and ask him. He’ll verify every word I’ve spoken.”

Dilman smiled. “I don’t believe I need to call your father as a reference, Miss Watson, but perhaps I should call him about something else—that third reservation I hold.”

“What is it?”

“Miss Watson, as a Negro I have never had much in common with my Southern colleagues in the Upper House. The only one I’ve had any liking for is Senator Watson, and I’ve not known him too well, either. He is a decent man, a gentleman, but he is still a product of, a representative of, an area, a people, who regard persons of my color as inferiors. What will your father think of his daughter serving as social secretary to a Negro? Does he even know you are here?”

“He does not know I am here, but if he did know, he would not have stopped me from coming, or even have tried to. He treats me as an individual, and he lets me have my freedom. We disagree about many things. We love each other none the less for it. As to what he would think of my being your social secretary—I don’t think he would like it. But I don’t think he would make his objections known to me or to anyone. He would not interfere. And I know he would understand that my affection for him would always be a thing separate from my loyalty to my employer.”

She paused, seeing how intent Dilman was upon her every word, and then she went on. “Mr. President, my father is not applying for this job. I am. While he is an enlightened Southerner, he still carries ancient prejudices. I do not. Please, Mr. President, in all fairness, do not visit the sins of the parents on their children.”

She sensed that she had convinced Dilman on this point, and his receptive expression confirmed it. “I believe you, Miss Watson,” he said at last. “If there were a First Lady in the White House to help me, I’d feel safe in hiring you on the spot. Being without a First Lady, I must burden the woman I hire with the social duties of two women. If there were only someone in Washington, beside your parent, who could assure me that you were absolutely capable of—”

That instant, it came to her. “I know someone,” she said.

“To recommend you?”

“Yes. Well, I hope he would. I mean Secretary of State Eaton.”

She had thoroughly impressed him, at last. It was evident in his reaction. And she knew why: not because Eaton was second in the government, but because he had Style. No Negro, she thought, would dare turn down an applicant who had the social sanction of the suave Secretary of State.

“Let’s hear what Secretary Eaton has to say about you,” said Dilman. He reached for the white console telephone. “Do you mind going into Miss Foster’s office for a moment? Right there, the door behind you.”

Sally could hear the President speaking on his direct line to the Department of State as she left the Oval Office and went quickly into Miss Foster’s office. She interrupted Miss Foster’s staccato typing to introduce herself and remind Miss Foster that they had met briefly at the White House Congressional Dinner two years before. After that, Sally allowed Miss Foster to resume her work, and she nervously moved around the small room, pretending an interest in the framed photographs on the wall and the reference books on the shelves.

She had done all that could be done, and now her entire future rested on Arthur Eaton’s word. If he said yes, her life would become new and meaningful. If he said so little as maybe, her life would be shattered. She would kill herself, for she would not only have lost the job, but she would know that she had lost Arthur.

Miss Foster’s telephone shook the room, or so it seemed to Sally. Her heart thumped. Miss Foster had hung up and gestured toward the President’s office. “You can go back in, Miss Watson.”

President Dilman was standing before his desk when she entered.

Suddenly his broad face offered her a wide smile, and he extended his hand. “Welcome to the White House, Miss Watson. Secretary Eaton’s praise and enthusiasm for you were so unbounded that for a moment I was almost too timid to think of hiring you. Apparently you are everything I hoped for, a remarkable young lady who’s going to safeguard my social life. Well, I am delighted.”

She clutched his hand in both of hers, squeezing it in her excitement, shutting her eyes and whispering, “Oh, thank you, thank you, you won’t regret it a day.” She wanted to faint, but whether from pride over the prestigious job or from knowledge of Arthur’s reciprocal love, she didn’t know.

She realized that Dilman was guiding her to the corridor exit. She tried to fasten on what he was saying. Something about calling Miss Foster tomorrow. Security papers, payroll papers, résumé blanks, all to be filled out. Something about seeing her office in the East Wing the day after tomorrow. Something about officially starting the job Monday. Thank you, Miss Social Secretary. Thank you, Mr. President.

Dazed, she found herself gliding past the secretarial cubicles outside Flannery’s office, found herself wandering into the press-filled lobby, found Reb Blaser and George Murdock and others watching her. Before they could question her, she left swiftly, half running up the White House driveway, past the guardhouse, and into busy Pennsylvania Avenue.

She walked on air, lofted and propelled by her unrestrained fantasies of bliss, and when she came down to earth she was on Fifteenth Street, in sight of Keith’s RKO Theatre. There was only one thing she wanted to do to fulfill her perfect day. She reached a drugstore, and then a telephone booth inside, and closed herself in a glass cocoon of privacy.

She dialed DU 3-5600.

The Department of State. The seventh floor. The chief receptionist.
The Secretary’s
secretary. Who? Miss Sally Watson? One moment please, I’ll see if he has gone to lunch.

“Hello, Sally?”

“Arthur, I hope I’m not bothering you in the middle of a conference or—”

“What happened, Sally?”

“Arthur, I got it! I can’t believe it. The President says I start Monday. I can’t believe it. And my thanks to you. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“You have the position because you deserve it. I told him honestly that I thought he would find no one your equal in Washington. I told him not to let you go. I told him that had I known you wanted a job, I would have released half my girls to make way for you. I’m delighted, Sally. Congratulations.”

“Arthur, that buildup you gave me. How can I live up to it? You can’t believe—”

“I believe more than that about you, Sally. You know I do.”

“Arthur, I want to do anything I can for you.”

“You do your job.”

“I want to repay you.”

“Mmm—well, my dear, there might be one way, as I suggested the last time we were together. It becomes fairly lonesome at home in the evening, especially at the dinner hour.”

“Invite me, Arthur, go ahead, invite me.”

“You are invited. I’ll get to you tomorrow with the date.”

“You won’t forget, this time?”

“I hadn’t forgotten, Sally. I’ve been busy. I am still busy. Except now that you are a government girl, I can justify it as mixing business with pleasure. I must run, Sally.” He paused. “There is only one thing I want you to do for me. When we meet, I want you to be wearing the white sequined gown. You know, the décolleté one. Good-bye, Sally.”

When she floated out of the booth, she was surer than she had ever been. She would be a First Lady of sorts yet—not Dilman’s, but Arthur Eaton’s.

It was a quarter to seven in the evening. The after-work, going-home traffic had abated. The Presidential limousine sped through the red lights and darkened thoroughfares toward the brownstone row house on Van Buren Street.

This morning, when he left his private residence, the journey had taken twice as long, and Douglass Dilman had not imagined that he would return so soon. All through the busy, depleting, and eventually upsetting day, the conviction had grown upon him that he must return as soon as possible.

Because of his second argument with his son, his appointment schedule had dragged on longer than planned. His last visitor had left him a half hour ago. Then he had requested Edna to inform Nat Abrahams at the Mayflower Hotel that their dinner must be postponed from eight o’clock to eight-thirty. Before she departed for the night, Edna had confirmed the change, adding that Mrs. Abrahams was confined to bed with a cold and that Mr. Abrahams would be coming alone.

After that, Dilman had telephoned Reverend Paul Spinger directly.

“Paul, is Wanda back from work yet?”

“She’s in the kitchen. I can get her for you, Mr. President.”

“No. I’d rather not speak to her on the phone. Simply ask her to stay there. I want to see her alone. Just for a few minutes.”

“I’ll tell her, Mr. President. How was your first day in the White House?”

“I don’t know, really, Paul. I’ve been too busy. . . . Look, Paul, I want my visit kept hush-hush. You understand? It’s not easy to arrange on this end, but I intend to manage it. See you all shortly.”

After notifying engagements secretary Lucas and press secretary Flannery that he was through for the day, and would spend the entire evening in his new dwelling, Dilman had stepped outside. He had come upon the Secret Service agent, Otto Beggs, the one who had accompanied him from the brownstone this morning. Beggs had been waiting beside the colonnade to accompany him again in the short walk to the ground-floor elevator. Dilman had remembered the husky agent was on a split shift, which might explain his disgruntled expression. Dilman also remembered that it was Beggs who had warned him he could travel nowhere alone.

As they strode through the chilled darkness, he had taken his measure of Beggs. It would not be easy, he had told himself, but he was determined to have this one important private visit. When they had entered the ground floor, Beggs had turned left, but Dilman had turned right. Almost comically, Beggs had scrambled back to his side.

Dilman had informed the agent that he wanted to make a short visit to his brownstone residence before dinner. There was a civil rights matter that he had to discuss informally with Reverend Spinger, his upstairs tenant. Dilman had insisted that he did not want the press alerted to this unscheduled meeting. Therefore, he wished minimum security maintained in order to allow his going and coming to be unnoticed. There had been a brief disagreement, nervous on both sides, and, at last, Beggs had consented to reduce their protective escort to three agents in the limousine, and one motorcycle policeman ahead and one behind, without sirens being put into use until they left the immediate White House area.

He had been pleased at how quickly and quietly the limousine had been made to appear, and how swiftly and stealthily their departure had been accomplished.

During the ride to Van Buren Street, he had known that he could not repeat this kind of rendezvous many times. Despite the ease of this slipping away from the President’s House and its prying eyes, there were always too many others, elsewhere, watching and whispering. Sooner or later he would be caught in the act. He could not constantly use Spinger as his camouflage. And, at the same time, he could not risk the possibility that his friendship with Wanda Gibson might be made public. It would be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Being a colored Chief Executive was bad enough. Being a Negro President with a mulatto lady friend was impossible. To survive, he must reinforce his public image as the loner, the bachelor. It would make him less threatening, less publicized, and make the resentful electorate feel more secure. Nevertheless, this one personal meeting with Wanda was imperative. If it developed as he expected that it would, the result would solve everything.