Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life

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Also by Ann Beattie

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Chilly Scenes of Winter
Secrets and Surprises
Falling in Place
The Burning House
Love Always
Where You’ll Find Me
Picturing Will
What Was Mine
Another You
My Life, Starring Dara Falcon
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Follies
Walks with Men
The New Yorker Stories

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Copyright © 2011 by Ann Beattie

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4391-6871-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-6873-8 (ebook)

A portion of the poem “Skinny-Dipping with Pat Nixon” by David Kirby appears courtesy of the poet. The article “Patricia Nixon, Wife of Former President, Dies at 81” is reprinted with permission of the
Los Angeles Times
(Copyright © 1993
Los Angeles Times
). The logo for
The Tech
is reprinted with permission of
The Tech
.

For Jane and Bob Hill

The Lady in the Green Dress

Stories as Preemptive Strikes

The Faux Pas

Major and Minor Events of Mrs. Nixon’s Life

Mrs. Nixon, Without Lorgnette

Approximately Twenty Milk Shakes

Friendly, Faithful, Fair

The Quirky Moments of Mrs. Nixon’s Life

Moments of Mrs. Nixon’s Life I’ve Invented

Mrs. Nixon’s Junior Year Play: The Romantic Age

Mrs. Nixon Plays Elaine Bumpsted, a Role Formerly Acted by Bette Davis

Mrs. Nixon Gives a Gift: Stories by Guy de Maupassant

Mrs. Nixon on Short Stories

Caracas, Venezuela, 1958

The Writer’s Sky

Mrs. Nixon Considers Automatic Writing

The Letter

Mrs. Nixon Reads “The Young Nixon” in Life,

Serving Mrs. Nixon First

Letters and Lies

A Story Occasioned by Considering Richard Nixon and Dolphins

My Anticipated Mail

Merely Players

Mrs. Nixon Lies, and Plays Hostess

Prophetic Moments

My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon

I Didn’t Meet Her

The Writer’s Feet Beneath the Curtain

King Timahoe, with a Coat Neither Cloth nor Republican

At Mr. Jefferson’s University

Mamie Eisenhower Is Included in Tricia’s Wedding Plans

Mrs. Nixon Does Not Bend to Pressure

Mrs. Nixon Hears a Name She Doesn’t Care For

The President, Co-owner, with Mrs. Nixon, of Irish Setter King Timahoe, Called “King,” Meets Elvis Presley, Known as “The King” but Called “Mr. Presley” by the President

Mrs. Nixon Reads The Glass Menagerie

Photo Gallery

Mrs. Nixon Thinks of Others

A Home Movie Is Made About Mrs. Nixon in China

Mrs. Nixon Gets the Giggles

Cathedrals

What Did Mrs. Nixon Think of Mr. Nixon?

Questions

The Nixons as Paper Dolls

Mrs. Nixon Is Taken on a Drive, 1972

Rashomon

David Eisenhower Has Some Ideas While Sitting by the Fire

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Mrs. Nixon Joins the Final Official Photograph

“The Dead” in New Jersey, 1990

Mrs. Nixon Sits Attentively as Premier Chou Offers the First Toast

Catalog Copy

Cookies

General Eisenhower Tries Role-Playing

Mrs. Nixon N + 7

Mrs. Nixon Explains

Mrs. Nixon Has Thoughts on the War’s Escalation

Mrs. Nixon Indulges Her Feelings

Mrs. Nixon Uses Her Powers of Persuasion

Mrs. Nixon Reacts to RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Possible Last Lines, with (Curtain)

She once said her “only goal” was to “go down in history as the wife of a president.”

My Back Porch in Maine

Mrs. Nixon’s Thoughts, Late-Night Walk, San Clemente

Chronology

Notes

About the Author

A note on the book: What you will read is based on research. There is a chronology appended that will allow the reader to know when certain events or moments in Mrs. Nixon’s life occurred. Also at the back of the book there are notes that correspond to individual sections. I imagine dialogue to which I had no access; I do my best to write as I think my characters would think and speak, based on what I’ve read about them. In some cases, factual events are used only as points of departure, which should become clear; those times I write fiction will be recognizable as such. The majority of events, letters, and names are real. (As a young man, Richard Nixon did date Ola Florence Welch; King Timahoe was the Nixons’ dog; Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State.) My readings of many texts, from a story by Maupassant to the play
The Romantic Age,
are conveyed as I understand them.

Tuck is given credit (he denies it, somewhat hollowly) for putting on an engineer’s hat and waving the Nixon train along in 1960, somewhat enraging the candidate who had just begun a rear platform speech. He is also alleged to have rapped sharply on the glass of the driver’s compartment in the Nixon campaign bus one day in Iowa, ordering the driver to start up. He did. The only problem was that Mrs. Nixon was still in town, a fact that was not discovered until the caravan was several miles down the road.

—Frank Mankiewicz,
Perfectly Clear:
Nixon from Whittier to Watergate

Mrs. Nixon

Mrs. Nixon’s Nicknames, Including Her Code Name as First Lady

Buddy
Miss Vagabond
Irish Gypsy
St. Patrick’s Babe in the Morn
Babe
Pat
Miss Pat
Patricia
Dearest Heart
The White Sister
Starlight