Desperate Measures (35 page)

"Perfectly."

"I assume that what you and Bradford spoke about tonight is something that he believes I can use as a weapon against my father," Mrs. Page said. "That's why I invited you in. Am I correct? Do you have biases as a reporter? Do you regard my father as an adversary?"

Pittman nodded again, not sure whether he was being set UP.

"Good." Mrs. Page turned to Denning. "Bradford, I'm disappointed in you. If you felt that these people could help me, why did you tell me to tam them away? Did you want all the credit, is that it? After so many years, are you still behaving as if you're in the State Department?"

Denning fidgeted and didn't answer.

Despite Mrs. Page's earlier invitation to sit, they had all remained standing. Now Pittman eased down onto an unusual-looking chair that had severe angles and edges and was made from wood embedded in shiny metal. It reminded him of experimental furniture that he had seen in New York at the Museum of Modern Ail. Unexpectedly, he found that the chair was comfortable. The others sat also.

"How did ... ?" Pittman felt awkward, not sure how to ask the question. "What made you ... ?"

"Speak directly. My father taught me always to get to the point," Mrs. Page said bitterly. "Why do I hate my father? He killed my mother."

Pittman was conscious of his heart beating.

"Since you've started, tell them, Vivian," Denning said. "Tell them everything. " Mm. Page narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "It's not something that outsiders can regard with sympathy, perhaps. You see a house of this magnitude-my mother's was even more grand-and you ask yourself how can anyone possibly be unhappy living in such luxury. Someone working on the assembly line at an automobile factory in Detroit would be more than pleased to trade places . But every circumstance has its unique liability. My mother was beautiful. She came from a traditional southern family that still remembered and retained affectations of genteel society from before the Civil War. In that world, a woman wasn't meant to do anything. My mother was taught that she gained her value simply by existing. She was raised as if she were an orchid, to be admired. Then she met my father on one of the last ocean cruises to Europe before the outbreak of the Second World War. The surroundings were romantic. She foolishly fell in love with him. The match was approved. They were married. And to her surprise, she discovered that she was indeed expected to do something-to be perfect in every regard. TO give the most perfect dinner parties. To provide the most perfect conversation. To be perfectly dressed. To create the most perfect impression." Mrs. Page's voice quavered. She hesitated, then continued. "Again, that hypothetical factory worker I mentioned wouldn't have any sympathy for a society woman who claimed to be suffering while living in splendor. But what if that factory worker had a foreman who criticized every task he did, day after day, month after month, year after year? What if that foreman had a way of getting into the worker's heart, of making every insult feel like the cut of a knife? The worker's nerves would be affected. His dignity would be wounded.

His spirit would be destroyed. Oh, you might say that the worker would have the option of resigning and finding another job. But what if that option wasn't available to him? What if he had to endure that foreman's abuse forever?"

Mrs. Page swallowed dryly. "My father is the cruelest man I have ever encountered. His need to dominate was so excessive that he ' browbeat my mother at every opportunity. He ridiculed. He demeaned. He degraded. I grew up in constant terror of him. Nothing I could do was good enough for him. And certainly nothing my mother could do was good enough. I used to cry myself to sleep out of pity for my mother.

Divorce? For a career diplomat with immense ambitions? In those days? Unthinkable. My mother raised the subject only once, and my father's reaction so terrified her that she never mentioned it again."

Mrs. Page thought for a long moment. Her perfectly poised shoulders weakened. "So my mother began to drink. Neither my father nor I realized that she had a problem with alcohol until her addiction was far advanced. At the start, she evidently did most of her drinking when my father was out of the house and I was at school. She drank vodka, so the alcohol would be less detectable on her breath. A vicious cycle developed. Her drinking impaired her ability to strive for the perfect standards that my father required. Dinner parties weren't organized to his satisfaction. My mother's behavior became indifferent. She no longer helped organize, let alone appeared at, required society charity events. At diplomatic receptions, she showed the boredom she'd been hiding. Naturally my father criticized her. The more he criticized, the more she drank, and that of course further affected her performance, causing him to be more furious with her, and in turn causing her to drink more.

"Eventually my mother's slurred speech gave her away.

In the days before the wives of public figures had the courage to admit their problems with alcohol and other substances, this had the capacity to be a major scandal. For a man of my father's strict standards and boundless ambitions, the situation was horrifying. Not because my mother had a problem, but because she had given him a problem. She couldn't be allowed to embarrass him and compromise his image. The first thing he did was search the house and find every bottle that she had hidden. The second thing he did was hire someone whose sole responsibility was to make sure that my mother didn't get near alcohol.

The tactics worked, but they didn't achieve what my father intended. My mother didn't return to her former ways and strive to match his image of perfection. Instead, with no escape, feeling even more repressed, my mother bad a nervous breakdown.

"This was equally horrifying to my father. If the diplomatic community discovered that his wife was emotionally and mentally unstable, he feared that he would be tainted. He worried that his colleagues would feel he was too distracted to perform his duties to the maximum. His career would be ruined. After my mother managed to break out of die house and caused what my father called a drunken scene at a nearby tavern, he decided to remove her from Washington.

"In those days there wasn't any such thing as the Betty Ford Clinic, of course, or its equivalent-places where a problem could be dealt with openly and thoroughly. But there were clinics of a different sort, where problems that the wealthy had were treated with utmost discretion. My mother's alcoholism, the instability caused by her nervous breakdown, these were addressed through drug therapy-sedatives. It was felt that my mother needed a rest, you see. Fatigue had to be the cause of her problems. After all, no woman with my mother's advantages of wealth and prestige could possibly be unhappy- For three months, as a consequence of the sedatives, she was in a stupor, little better than a sleepwalker.

She needed help to go to the boom. She didn't recognize me when I came to visit. When the clinic decided that the alcohol was fully out of her system, gradually the sedatives were taken away. She came home. She seemed to be more satisfied.

"Then one day she disappeared. After a frantic search, the servants found my mother drunk, collapsed, mumbling next to the furnace in the basement. After that, my father's attitude became quite different. The excuse he'd given Washington society for my mother's three-month absence, her stay in the clinic, was that she had been visiting relatives in Europe. Now he concocted a different excuse. This was during July of 1953. He rented a summer estate on Cape Hatteras. He sent away all the servants. He bought my mother several cases of vodka. To this day, I vividly remember the sneering tone with which he told her, 'You want to avoid responsibilities? You want to have a drink now and then? Here. You're on vacation.' "He poured her a drink, poured her another, and another. When the supply of vodka diminished, he bought more. He made sure that her glass was always full. If she appeared to be losing her taste for it, he would berate and humiliate her until she again felt the urge to drink. Sometimes in the night, I would hear noises and sneak from my room, to discover that my mother was sprawled in the bathroom, where she had vomited. My father would be kneeling beside her, calling her disgusting names, pouring vodka down her throat. When my father realized that I was noticing too much, he arranged for me to visit his parents at their summer estate on Martha's Vineyard. I hated to be near him, but I was afraid for my mother, and I begged not to go."

Mrs. Page had been staring toward a violently colored Abstract Expressionist painting across from her all the while she spoke in a monotone, her flat, bleak voice communicating no hint of the intense turmoil that her eyes indicated she was feeling. Now she paused, her normally rigid shoulders drooping as she turned her attention to Pittman and Jill. "I never saw my mother again. She was dead by the end of the summer. I was told that the medical examiner's explanation for the cause of death was alcohol poisoning. My father talked to me in detail about what had happened. He tried to make me interpret what I had seen in such a way that his behavior was understandable. 'Your mother had a greater problem than you can imagine,' he said. 'I encouraged her habit because I hoped that if she got sick enough, she would stop drinking. I made her drink after she'd vomited in the hopes that she would associate nausea with alcohol.' My father hired an expert on alcoholism who claimed to have advised my father to try this approach."

The room became silent. Pittman spoke softly. "I'm very sorry." Mrs. Page didn't reply.

"But there's something I don't understand," Pittman said. "And what is that?"

-,If your father was afraid of scandal because of your mother's alcoholism, if he wanted to hide it initially, why did he suddenly change his attitude and cause her death, especially in that particular way? That certainly would have attracted attention and caused a scandal."

"My father is an immensely devious man. He came to realize that if he made himse4f appear the victim, he would gain his colleagues' sympathy. He told them that the Problem had been going on for quite a while, that he had done everything possible for her, that his life had been a nightmare. He pretended to be inconsolable, distraught from the effort of having tried to control her all summer. He'd done everything possible, he kept insisting. And the diplomatic community believed him. Then, in his greatest piece of hypocrisy, he created the impression that with great pain he was overcoming his grief to devote himself to his profession. Each day his colleagues admired him for his strength. His reputation grew. He became ambassador to Great Britain, and after that, ambassador to the Soviet Union, and eventually, of course, secretary of state. But I know him for what he is. He killed my mother, and I'll never forgive him."

"Because we both hated him, Vivian and I joined forces," Denning said. "In an effort to help her, I managed to obtain a copy of the medical examiner's report. Vivian's father had lied to her. The cause of death was alcohol poisoning in tandem with the use of Seconal."

"Seconal?" Jill straightened. "But that's a tranquilizer."

Mrs. Page nodded. "The of sedative that my mother was given while she was away for three months in the clinic. "

"Wait a minute," Pittman said. "Are you suggesting that your mother wasn't dying fast enough to suit your father, so he helped her along by adding sleeping pills to the vodka?"

"That is correct." Mrs. Page tightened her lips.

"Either way, it's murder," Jill said. "But the second way, using the sleeping pills might be easier to prove." Mrs. Page shook her head. "My father somehow discovered that I'd read the medical examiner's report. He anticipated my accusation and confessed that there was a secret he hadn't been able to bring himself to tell me. He said that when my mother was in the clinic, she had apparently stolen a container of the tranquilizers that she was being given. The container-with a label that indicated where she had obtained them-was discovered after her death. The night she died, had swallowed so many of the Seconal capsules that he no-other choice except to conclude she had committed s Pittman's stomach soured. "You believe he was lying," Jill said.

"What I believe makes no difference. Proof is what matters. And there is no way to discount my father's story. I want to destroy him, not throw my own integrity into question. Unless I have indisputable evidence, he will simply use the reports from the mental hospital and the medical examiner to disparage my claims. Any accusations I make won't be treated seriously. I will have only one chance. For most of my life, I have struggled to find a way to punish him for what he did to my mother, with no success. And now, as other grand counselors"-she said the words with contempt-"have died, I am forced to consider the possibility that my father is old enough that he, too, might die before I succeed in punishing him."

Denning stood. "That's why I came here tonight. I may have found a way."

Mrs. Page focused her intense gaze upon him.

"There's a chance we can prove that your father and the others may have allowed their sexual orientation to compromise their work."

"Sexual orientation?"

"Were they homosexuals? It never occurred to me until my discussion with these reporters tonight. Did you ever have any suspicion that-?"

Mrs. Page widened her eyes.

The sound that came from her throat made Pittman's skin prickle. At first he feared that Mrs. Page was choking on something. Then, as the Sound became louder, he recognized it for what it was: laughter, full-directed, contemptuous laughter.

"Bradford, you are a fool. Is that what you rushed here to tell me?