Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 1: Cadwaller's Gun (39 page)

“It’s always so easy for all of you, isn’t it? Just find ’em and fool ’em and so on and so forth until the bloody cows come home. Whether it’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am or wham, bam, thank you Stan.”

“I didn’t have to fool him, believe me. But maybe the grass is
always greener on the other side of the hill.”

“Which means what?”

“Just that one cliche deserves another. Sorry, but Addison I’m not. How did it go? ‘We often wondered what had been squandered…’”

“Plundered.”

“I always did say he’s more sentimental than I am. Whatever became of that friend of yours on Bank Street, anyhow? I liked her that one time we met.”

“Oh, she’s married, I suppose.”

“You suppose. By the way, which of you got married first?”

“I couldn’t care less. Does it matter?”

“You tell me.”

“She did,” I fibbed. “I just didn’t like her husband.”

Posted by: Pam

As for the cuckolding of Brannigan Murphy, which I’d better make haste to describe in all its why-Henry’d, cuke-encumbered detail, the only thing Bran’s lawyers got right was the city it happened in. It could also scarcely be called Pam’s doing, since I just wanted a quick quote on shipyard absenteeism to stick into “Liberty Belles.” When I put my head in Edith’s door to ask her receptionist which Democrat on the Naval Affairs Committee would do, she gave me an appraising look after recommending a young Texas go-getter, still in his mid-thirties but already in his third full term. “Just make sure your ear is the only thing he talks off,” she said wryly.

Of course my hair was the usual electrified oatmeal. But in a tight outfit of Pan Am blue, the closest Saks could come to approximating Connie Ostrica’s WAC uniform, the Buchanan gams were on exceptional display. You can only be so modest at five-ten, especially when fashion is doing its part for our troops in more ways than one by not wasting fabric on anything except the shoulder pads.

That’s why the energetic tick-tocking of female hips in snug skirts is as much part of my wartime way-back-when as greasy GIs in fatigues, and did we ever
need
those shoulder pads, too. No man’s eyes would have reached our faces otherwise. Anyhow, I was reasonably sure I could induce the Congressman to give me five minutes.

He gave me twenty, the cuckolding of Murphy included. Once I’d been gladhanded into his inner office (slatted blinds; pictures of his wife, FDR, himself with FDR, but not of himself with his wife; law books, and the peculiar Scotch-tape redolence of warmed wood, upholstery, and paint in a Congressional office in an Indian-summer October back before air conditioning made life in Washington more comfortable and less sensual), I think Pam got to ask one question. A quarter hour later, virtually the next sound from her mouth was a moan.

The accent had gotten less baffling early on, devoutly though I hoped the Congressman never had to say “I’ll be leaving Abilene” when the matter was urgent, clarity vital, and his audience Northern. But in all my many days, I’ve never known another transition from blather to screwing that was such a continuum. It was as if copulation was only volubility by newly physical means, just as his monologue had been physicality barely restrained by its obligation to stay verbal.

I’d also never been literally bent back over a desk. I couldn’t tell you just when the large hand gripping my right elbow for emphasis got tag-teamed by another pulling my shoulder-padded left shoulder close for greater confidentiality. Or when the plough nose boring in beneath his hooded eyes bumped mine as the Congressman’s most sensitive feature, that rangily dewlapped but oddly dainty mouth, went on berating and beseeching me to understand the war, America, and then himself in ascending order of difficulty. His huge ears hung palely in the background like an elephant hunter’s trophies.

Shipyard absenteeism? Good God, when he thought of the sacrifices our boys were making in New Guinea’s muddy jungles, the mere mention
of shipyard absenteeism made his blood boil. I hadn’t been to the battlefronts—but
he had. (Indeed so: on a VIP junket whose vague agenda had roused Douglas MacArthur’s ire.
With full Rooseveltian backing, its true goal was to let the Congressman claim status as a veteran in every
political
campaign from then on.)

As for himself, he was proud to have worn his country’s uniform during this great struggle. (He probably hadn’t had to have it drycleaned more than once, since it got mothballed the instant FDR ordered all members of Congress holding military commissions to go on inactive duty. His stint as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve had served its purpose, and the 1942 elections were coming up.) Excuse his French, but the Congressman was, yes,
God-damned
proud to have shared those boys’ dangers, however briefly. (His one flight as a kibitzer on a bombing mission had lasted two hours, but the Silver Star they pinned on him for it looked good.)

Whenever he thought of the pitiful lad whose belongings he’d packed up with these very hands to send ’em on home to his Momma—well, not
his
Momma, of course, bless that fine lady; the lad’s Momma. Bless her too—shipyard absenteeism incited the Congressman so much he wanted to smite people. Why, if
he’d
been that kind of slacker, the good folks back in the Hill Country who’d chosen him as their representative still wouldn’t have rural electricity.

Did I know he’d done that in his first
year
in office? Not even thirty yet, by God, not even elected to his first full term; sent here by a special election they’d all said he didn’t have a prayer of winning. And
that
,
young miss, was the sort of gumption these United States needed if we were going to prevail. Could I please tell him how we were going to honor those poor boys and their Mommas’ sacrifices and make rural electricity worth enjoying and get this damned thing over with when it still took us two
months
to get a Liberty ship from first rivet to christening?

“Forty-five days,” I gasped into his nostrils, and the Congressman’s craning nose inhaled my words. His vast ears only heard a reason to expand on what he was expounding.

It wasn’t just Liberty ships! It was destroyers, and battlewagons, and transports and landing craft and big goddam aircraft carriers. We needed all those by dates certain, in tonnages and numbers the Committee would be glad to provide—and as a longtime friend of the working man, by
no means
was he going to let anyone
put all the blame on shipyard absenteeism. Owners had to do their part too. Did I have any idea
what pathetic
—
yes,
pathetic—
percentage of capacity America’s industrial plant was running at,
nine full months
after Pearl Harbor?

“Sixty-eight percent,” I gasped. “But the September figures aren’t out yet.”

Well, now. Well, now! Maybe I
was
in some position [I’ll say: his belt buckle was gouging my bellybutton] to feel the Congressman’s engorged wrath at the idea of business as usual during this hour of national peril. Did I know I was a fine example of a fine, fine young American woman?
Regent’s
,
was it? Old Mortimer was hiring them younger and prettier these days. Smart, too! He hadn’t had much of an education himself—just a degree from Southwest State Teachers’ College of San Marcos. He reckoned that made him as good a man as any. Where had I gone to school?

“Barn—”

That’s just what he’d thought! Did I see, did I
feel
the holy power and the wonder of Barnard and Southwest State Teachers’ College of San Marcos marching toward victory together? Could I grasp his American metaphor? Did I know that in New Guinea’s jungles he’d seen other fine women just like me—nurses, tending our brave boys in muddy tents by a single lantern’s light as the ground shook from Nip bombs. Nobody was asking anybody where they’d gone to school out there. He’d been lonely, far from home; never mustered up the courage. Yet just from pure gratitude, he’d always wanted to—just one kiss—wanted to—

In this changed culture, Panama, the sound of tearing underwear would signal violation to any movie audience worth the salt in its popcorn tubs. Yet while desire, as a conscious choice, didn’t enter into things on my end—no time—neither did protest. If you must know, the hand that pushed down those nettlesome undies after a moment of too-many-nooks snags was my own.

They ripped when his hand took charge at mid-thigh, and unlike a White House intern of a later day, I wasn’t much on souvenirs. Stuck under yesterday’s handy
Evening Star
for propriety’s sake, those just-bought panties from Hecht’s ended up in his office wastebasket. All in all, your Gramela can think of quotes from
by Pamela Buchanan
’s oeuvre that did my wardrobe less damage and made my knee-locked bus ride back to Jake’s less tense than “‘Shipyard absenteeism is our Achilles’ heel. “Work or Fight” must be our motto,’ said Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.), an up-and-comer to watch on the Navel Affairs Committee.”

Thankfully, Roy fixed the typo without comment—and for Lady Bird’s sake, I’ve thought of pseudonymizing LBJ. But if I make it to 1968 on
daisysdaughter.com
, calling him Congressman Austin Driskill here will only add confusion to our encounter in the White House a quarter century later. Sexually, the reprise was a fiasco. We both had other things on our minds: Ho Chi Minh in Lyndon’s case, Cadwaller’s tense presence in the dining room at the opposite end of the East Wing in mine.

By some lights, I know I’m an also-ran. Even today, the District’s awash in old prunes happy to wheeze away at the drop of a martini olive about their hump with Jack Kennedy. I’m still not sure I didn’t get the better bargain. While neither was renowned for his consideration
after
,
you did feel you had Lyndon’s full attention
during
—not cool Jack’s forte, so we’re told and I can easily believe. That knee-trembler in Congressman Johnson’s office in my twenty-third year also left me in no doubt why he was by far the greater legislator of the two.

I mean, one saw the fraudulence. It was transparent. Yet it was fraudulence transfigured and exalted. It was fraudulence whose very transparency communicated his conviction that it was only a method and the end it served, whether selflessly national or throbbingly personal, was all the more ennobled by the contrast.

Even as my panties ripped, I’d felt overwhelmed by my enlistment in a great cause. My Pan Am–blue skirt hadn’t been shoved up to my ribcage for more than ten seconds before I
knew
we’d defeat the Axis. I quivered as throngs of shipyard workers practically punched each other for the honor of being first through the gate.

Briefly. Then a disheveled and, in pre-Pill days, anxious Pam was babbling “Bathroom?”

He’d already stepped behind a screen. “Hallway,” he called over a tap’s gurgle soon augmented by a cuke-encumbered one.

My gratitude when the thirty-sixth President’s biographers confirmed his habit of peeing in his office sink was considerable, since I did wonder at the time if I was dreaming. I did my best to pull myself together before returning to his outer office, but one look from his receptionist told me my odds of fooling anybody would improve on nonexistent only after I’d left Lyndonville.

“One piece of hard-won advice, hon. The next time you make an appointment, you ask me first if he just happens to have a little ol’ meeting at the White House comin’ up. You ought’ve seen the last gal to come out that door when he knew he’d be seein’ FDR in an hour. Jeepers,
she
looked like a plucked chicken. Here, lemme hold that compact steady for you.”

At least in New York circles, my divorce from Murphy got judged 1943’s most sensational as it was. If Bran had known his cuckolder’s identity and named him in the suit instead of Jake, my hubby might’ve accomplished what he always so forlornly hoped to: alter history. Of course the problem with altering it that early is that nobody will ever know the history that’s been altered.

Posted by: Pam

As soon as I took a breath and rescanned the papers handed me by a bailiff making his fourth trip (hence Roy’s telegram) to
Regent’s
, I understood why Murphy’d been so upbeat at breakfast. Saw what his lawyers were counting on in naming Jake Cohnstein: in exchange for keeping Jake’s actual preferences out of the courtroom, I’d be forced not to contest the divorce. Winning one on the charge of adultery guaranteed my hubby wouldn’t have to part with a dime.

They were taking no chances that, while I might love Bran less, I might love Sutton Place more. Even though I didn’t care about the money, something Murphy revealingly never believed, the gambit of casting Pam as the cheat made me so furious I decided I didn’t give a parachute how much dirt got tracked as I stomped out of that corner.

Since Roy and Cath Charters had split up by then, I was halfway to my editor’s office to get the name of his attorney when spotting Jimmy Bond made me realize I’d better put in a call to Jake first. When I hung up half an hour later, I was giggling.

“Why, Pam. None of you ever asked,” he’d said, tickled himself at my astonishment once he’d broken the news that was to leave even Addison dumbstruck when it came out in court four months later. “It’s one reason I wangled this commission. After David enlisted, I wanted to do my part too.”

I felt much better once I knew my only regret would be Viper. Roy’s attorney was in uniform and on Wild Bill Donovan’s staff by then, so I had to find one of my own: Oliver Watson, Esq., whose funereal shingle between a florist’s and a jeweler’s on Amsterdam Avenue had a touch of
Et in Arcadia ego
I liked. A week after I’d been served, Pam countersued, naming Viper Leigh as co-respondent. With a late-May court date, it was on.

It’ll sound medieval to you, bikini girl. Back before prenups and no-fault ruined things for the spectators, a contested divorce could be a real prizefight. Despite having written a couple of forgotten bestsellers, I’m not sure I’ve ever given masses of strangers more reading pleasure than I did during the eleven days Murphy and I made the beast with two left hooks in a Manhattan courtroom. Aside from letting Congressman Lyndon Johnson lope to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a clear head, calm loins, and renewed faith in his star, it was probably my major contribution to the war effort.

Since as a celebrity Bran wasn’t movie-star caliber and it was only a trial for divorce, not statutory rape, my hubby and I—not to mention Viper Leigh and Trinka Solynka—may not have done as much for morale as Errol Flynn did when “In Like Flynn” became a battle cry from New Guinea to Casablanca. But if there was a Bronze Star for salaciousness, as opposed to Flynn’s chimerical Medal of Honor, all four of us could have put in for one.

Posted by: Pam

You’re welcome to hunt up the full transcript. Since I don’t have all day and may have less if the phone rings, I’ll just give the highlights as I remember them. Having uttered one of the more startling sentences heard in any divorce trial up to then, I don’t see how you can blame me if I make it the last word.

Murphy’s case was in trouble as soon as Jake Cohnstein took the stand in his U.S. Army captain’s uniform. Even Oliver Watson was in the dark about what we had in reserve. Jake and I had both hoped it wouldn’t come out during discovery, and it hadn’t. We knew they’d had a detective prowling Washington for some conquest of his who’d tell all about their frolics—or, more likely, could be blackmailed into placing me not only in Jake’s apartment but his bed, naked as foolscap and playing Cohnstein-scissors-paper for all I was worth.