Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 2: Carole Lombard's Plane (49 page)

Posted by: A Blushing (I’ll Say) Bride

After we’d let our drinks do the talking for a bit, Andy steepled his fingers. “As your birthday chef, I’m at your disposal. I’m also damned if I’m going to make another decision tonight without getting your input first. Would you rather eat now or watch one of your movies?”

“Oh, eat, eat. I’m starving. Nothing but nibbles all day.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“It didn’t seem all that interesting.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I put up with this crap,” Andy muttered. He’d already restowed
Pink Rosebuds
and Nick’s other mementos in the Nenupharcophagus, tactfully placing it in the foyer so that I could nudge it out into the hall with no trouble if that’s what I wanted. As he moved to clear my living room table, he looked puzzled at the battlements I’d stacked against my ruins: everything from Murphy’s
Collected Plays
and
The Pilgrim Lands at Malibu
to a picture of Noah Gerson exiting a jeep at the Wailing Wall and another of Hopsie in his topper and swim trunks.

“Pam, what’ve you been up to?”

“All that? Oh, nothing. Just a few things Tim Cadwaller—you know him, our Cadwaller’s grandson—asked me to sort for him. Something to do with a book, I believe. That’s why I got out his last one, see what I’d be in for.”

Andy was holding Nan’s snapshot of Cadwaller. “I’ve always liked this one,” he said with Pondian fondness. “You know I regret missing out on Nagon.”

“Someone had to hold the fort at the Department. You had Paris and none of the others did. But how do you know the photo?”

“Pam, I’ve met Nan Finn once or twice in my life,” Andy said patiently. “She sent me one afterward too.”

“I thought it was just me.” (I did feel a bit trespassed on.)

“As I remember, there were fifty or sixty of us. Nan’s idea of a gesture is just quieter than yours. But ours were smaller.”

As Andy restored
You Must Remember This: The Posthumous Career of World War Two
to its spot in the trophy bookcase, his eye fell on the hastily replaced and damnably protruding copy of
by Pamela Buchanan
’s second book above it. He’d known since Paris days what had nestled behind
Glory Be
throughout Hopsie’s and my marriage, and one push of the book’s spine told him it was again. Cadwaller’s gun was in his hand before I could protest.

“Now I’m
really
getting curious,” he said. “I thought this had been exiled to the Paris footlocker with the other private souvenirs. What’s going on?”

“Aren’t I allowed to make one sentimental gesture on my birthday?” I croaked. “Anyhow, it’s not loaded.”

He looked so infuriatingly amused that I’d have shot him with it if it had been and I could’ve wheeled over to wrestle it from his grip. “How long ago did you find out?”

“Some time ago. But the question, dear Andy, is how you know to begin with.”

“Cadwaller asked me to do it before he went into Bethesda,” Andy explained, ejecting the empty ammo clip with an octogenarian’s careful version of cockiness. His mimicry of Hopsie was convincing mostly because it was affectionate: “‘Andy,’ said he, ‘I’m not a vain man. But I worry our Pam cares about me a good deal, and under the circumstances I can’t count on her intelligence to choose the best way of demonstrating it after I’m gone.’ So, yes—I’ve got the bullets.” He displayed their former home on his extended palm. “Which, yes, I’ve been sentimental enough to keep. In my
Berlin
footlocker.”

So naturally, once the table was cleared and then set—oysters brought out on the half shell, then replaced by crab cakes, salad, and sourdough bread baked
in Brother Nicholas Carraway’s old kiln as Andy’s red and my white wine (one Scotch had been more than enough to make an invisible Hardy Boys doctor gibber in distress) flowed—we talked about my and our Cadwaller. Then we
talked about Nan and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
,
the last play we’d attended with her
at the Folger: a marvelous Oberon, a miscast but often delightful Titania.

Then, as we always did, we turned to Potus and Potusville and the war and the rest of the mess he’d made of our now ancient lives. “Yes, and then they started calling French fries freedom fries,” Andy said, twinkling.

When that didn’t provoke me to a fresh Pamamiad, he looked mildly quizzical. He knew nothing of Pam’s longest day. Nor had I told him of my White House phone call, since I knew I’d have to rehash it at length and it had turned out in the end to be so negligible.

That wasn’t the only reason I was distracted. By the time Andy cleared our plates and went to get us our coffee, Pam’s awareness that she had one more chore to perform had the Rheumas twisting my napkin. He came back with two cups, set them down next to our respective medicinal Rubicon cubes.

“Andy,” I said. “Not without some surprise, I’ve got to admit this has been really lovely. What I’ve got to say now is rotten thanks, but I’ve made up my mind. You need to know I can’t marry you.”

The milk he was pouring didn’t even break stride. “Well! I’m glad that’s been settled,” he said cheerfully. “Of course I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Posted by: Meet Pamela

“Andy Pond, you’ve got nerve! You’ve spent three or four years trying to talk me into moving in with you,” I accused him. “‘Why don’t we play out the string under the same roof? Wouldn’t it be easier to quit kidding ourselves?’ Yes, and then you even said, ‘Pam, you can’t cook and I can. Why don’t I do it for both of us every day? I’m not Dottie but I’ll do and so on and so forth.’” Speaking of cooking, I’m afraid Pam’s humble pie came straight from literature’s Automat: “Have you met someone else, for God’s sake?”

“Yes, quite a while ago.” He’d gone from perplexed to concerned to affectionate as I spoke. “Pam, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t proposing. I was just being practical. You live alone, so do I, and we’re ancient.”

“So a little rash senile groping in our old age might do us in and good riddance?”

“No, not at all. I worry about you. So does Nan, for that matter. I can’t tell you how often we’ve talked about it.”

“Oh boo fucking hoo,” I snapped at him. “If you two are my friends, I am not to be worried about. I forbid it. I’ll shoot you both.”

“With what? I told you I’ve got the bullets. Pam, listen. You can’t walk half a block without needing your wheelchair. If those fat glasses of yours broke, you’d be as lost as a mole at the Ice Capades. Apparently, looking out for you also runs in my family. What if there’s a fire in the Rochambeau, what if you break your hip in the shower? I’m not saying I’m robust. I’m just betting against you falling down in the bathtub at exactly the moment the kitchen stove blows up in my face.”

“Oh, what horseshit. Alone we could die game. Who’s the somebody else?”

“Pam, you’re joking.”

“Often. Not right now. Who is she?”

Andy sighed and then smiled. “I’ve been in love with Nan Finn since the week
Breathless
came out in Paris,” he said, and I
did
feel a bit slow on the uptake. “You and Hopsie didn’t know them yet then, but I did. They were over from Frankfurt and we saw the odd little movie everybody was talking about.”

“And?”

“And nothing. And everything, at least for young Andy. Afterward we went to a café and Nan started prattling about how mean she thought Godard had been to poor Jean Seberg—you know, the same way she still does at her Christmas party. All of three sentences in I was praying my face wouldn’t give me away.”

“Why not? I know Nan. She’d have been flattered.”

“You knew Ned too. He was watching. He always did most men. Like a hawk, drunk or sober.”

“Why didn’t you ever do anything about it? I mean once he was no longer with us. It has been a while.”

“Love’s love,” Andy shrugged. “It’s an emotion, Pam, not a directive. Nothing in any law says you’ve got to do something about it. I didn’t, I haven’t. I was and am pretty sure Nan wouldn’t want me to.”

“Does she know?”

“Oh, I think so by now. That’s why I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want me to do something about it.”

“But then—oh, for God’s sake, Andy. What about bloody
me?
”

“What about you? You’re the wife of the man I admired more than any I’ve known. You’re my dearest old friend. I’ve never regretted a moment I’ve spent with you no matter how hard you tried. But romance? No, never. That’s the whole story.”

“Romance, my ass,” I reproached him. “I’m just being practical too. You could’ve at least groped me a few times before we got senile. As I recall, I was still up for boinky-boink as late as Clinton’s reelection. Hell, I’d’ve let you call me Nan if you wanted. Or
needed
to, Andy. So there.”

Instead of fading, Andy’s smile took an odd turn. “Pam, let’s be honest. Don’t you think that shoe might belong on the other foot?” he asked mildly.

“And what does that mean?”

“Oh, Pam, please.”

“Oh Pam please what?”

“Oh Pam please,” said Andy as if to a child, “we knew even in Paris that you were a lesbian.”

Such
a long day I’d had. Would it ever end?

“Well, Mr. Pond. You
do
have the bullets,” I told him.

“That’s not how I thought of it.”

“God, how I do loathe that word,” I said, an aversion daisysdaughter.com readers have presumably noticed by now. “The only word in the language I hate more is ‘orphan.’”

“Pam, I’m sorry.”

Then my head jerked back up. “
‘We’?
Who in hell is this ‘we,’ may I ask? Oh do tell,” I drawled.

But that only tickled him. “To be honest, my hunch is a fair number of people. But I was mainly thinking of Cadwaller.”

5. Carole Lombard’s Plane

Posted by: Pamus

Sorry, daisysdaughter.com readers. Which I now know I do have, however scattered or odd or disguised or perverse. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.

If you must know I passed out at midnight. Then I dragged the old pretzel I live in to bed with no recollection of what I’d been doing at my computer. May I remind you I turned eighty-six yesterday.

It’s now afternoon on June 7. D Plus One, as we called it in Normandy. What the D might stand for here is of course up to you.

Nonetheless, I’m a believer in courtesy where courtesy’s due. That’s why the first thing I did this morning was to pick up the telephone—no longer the elephone; that was yesterday too—and call dear Bob’s office. “This is Pamela Cadwaller. Is the Senator in?”

True, he’s been out of the Senate since ’96. His wife’s now the one whose office is on Capitol Hill. But beside the Potomac, your last title’s permanent. Hopsie was “Mr. Ambassador” even in the ICU.

“I’m sorry, no, Mrs. Cadwaller. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes. I just wanted to thank  him for arranging my birthday call yesterday. It made for an interesting day and I do so like those. Don’t you?”

“I’m sorry, I’m new. Will the Senator know what you’re talking about?”

“Oh, yes, dear, I think so. But if not, he’ll know how to fake it. We’re old.”

I left my number in case. Then out of the blue I plucked the likely significance of my Oval Office interlocutor’s most peculiar remark: “He came down here, showing everyone his gun.” Must’ve meant Bob did a little reminding he’s got a bit of standing as a World War Two vet—as also, by attachment, do I.

The second thing I did was to open the Nenupharcophagus and retrieve Nicholas Carraway’s
Under the Red, White, and Blue
.
Spent a couple of hours with the only eyewitness account of the Scandal and could see why he’d fibbed to Pammie about burning the typescript. Almost involuntarily, he’d kept painting my mother in hues less than lovely.

Nick’s ridiculous infatuation with her pigheaded Narcissus of a bootlegger suitor had me more than once rolling the mimsies behind my fat lunettes. When I got to some guff about the fellow’s “Platonic ideal of himself,” I snorted “Forty-nine cents for
cabbage?
Cripes! What’s Denmark coming to?” But I must say that in every gesture and sneer, Father lives and breathes like a lab rat under cold light. As for the budding pudding who was to become me, she only trots in and out once or twice, a child of no particular interest or importance except as a refraction of Daisy’s mentality.

Was I hurt? Oh, hell no. Children that young don’t interest me either. What charmed and engrossed me was the discovery that my diffident guardian, the modest Chicago ad man who’d coined
“we keep you clean in muscatine,”
was an astonishing writer. His perceptions of romance remain immature: picture Daisy’s dim life at forty with her bootlegger suitor and you’ll see what a crock the whole thing is. Yet the verbal music, knit of detail, and compact choice of incident were all breathtaking. As you may’ve noticed, achieving compactness has not been daisysdaughter.com’s best event.

I honestly think that if
Under the Red, White, and Blue
had been published as fiction—perhaps under some better, more compact title in an alternative funhouse America I sometimes like to imagine—it’d be seen today as some sort of small classic. Knowing my compatriots, of course they’d swoon at the drivel instead of admiring the prose and planning.

Then just for the fuck of it I watched
The Gal I Left Behind Me
for the first
time since Glendale, and guess what? Tim was right. Now that Bill M.’s long gone, I can better appreciate Hal Lime’s skill at miming chipper but unreliable callowness. Eve is yummy, and of course there’s no pretense that she’s playing me. As for Pam’s own mute cameo—as “Peg Kimball” enters what I think is supposed to be Claridge’s in her bouncy new war-reporter togs to taunt Eddie “Harting,” I come out the revolving door’s other side, dressed as a nurse—it’s fairly funny if you’re in the know. They cut away just as I start to glance behind me.

Those two seconds of film are also the only photographic record of Pam as she was then in motion. Gerson and I took no home movies, that being too much of a busman’s holiday for my second husband. I admit to reprogramming that DVD chapter more than once.

After I’d watched myself exit a soundstage revolving door multiple times, the next thing I did was to retrieve yesterday’s Metro section from its June 6 seagull skate under my table. Smoothed it out and reread the story the mimsies had read at a quarter past six the morning of my longest day. That was mere minutes before I fetched Cadwaller’s gun and daisysdaughter.com first Lindberghized cyberspace: “As of now, my name is” and so on and on.