The Henderson Equation (8 page)

The Parker house on Massachusetts Avenue, a William Hobson
Richardson travesty with turrets and cupolas, was a landmark even in the old
days. In a city that made architectural judgments of people's worth and
eccentricities, the house was a fitting residence for a banker turned newspaper
owner. Mr. Parker, George Albert--it was his statement of himself to have
others think of him in terms of three names--was solidly built, a pocket watch
and Phi Beta Kappa key always displayed on the vested, large expanse of belly.
If this wasn't enough to make his antecedents suspect, there were always the
pince-nez glasses and the high black shoes that attested to his resistance to
contemporary styles, as if pre-World War I were his permanent era. Nick's first
brief view of him with the oak panelling as background in the library of his
home, standing near a crackling fire, one hand on the edge of a leather winged
chair, dark pinstriped vested suit, pince-nez removed but visible in the
fingers of his right hand, had given him a completeness of view that subsequent
casual encounters could never erase.

"Father, this is Nick Gold, a newspaperman friend of
Charlie's," Myra had said, as if the identification as a newspaperman were
necessary ingratiation.

"Ah yes," Mr. Parker responded. He was
preoccupied. But Myra had planted a kiss on his cheek and the old man responded
in kind. To Nick, it had been a brief photograph, a flicker of the lens. He had
no idea that more than a quarter of a century later he would be contemplating
that still clear print.

He had been invited down for the engagement party. By then
Charlie was in the Washington bureau of the
News,
a post granted as
therapy by McCarthy after Charlie had been found drunk and spinning on the huge
globe in the lobby of the New York building. Somehow the air of Washington had worked a cure. Charlie, sensing the destructive power at work, went on the
wagon, and his letters to Nick testified to returning health and an interest in
Washington that absorbed his energies.

"This place is a howl," he wrote in a clipped,
hurried prose beaten out between deadlines on thick, pulpy copy paper in pica
type with capitalizations rampant. "Attended my First Presidential News
conference. Harry is a feisty bugger, a Real hayseed, but lotsa moxey. I didn't
have the Balls to ask him a question although They tell me that some of the
questions are Rigged in advance. Personally, I think that's Horseshit, but old
hands here say that FDR, who they call his Imperial Highness, used to plant
questions among friendly news-buffs to get a point across. Anyway, I feel
damned good, now that I'm off the Goddamned juice. It was a good Move, getting
down here, even though I Bucked like hell. I miss you, you old Bastard. You'll
probably go to hell on a sled now that I'm not around to Blow your nose. Oh
yeah. I'm getting laid a lot. There's lots of girls down here from Pennsylvania and Ohio. The girls from those dumb shit towns (like the one you came from)
Fuck the best. Don't take my word for it. It's been validated by big Shirley.
She runs a wonderful little cat house on 16th Street. The Best whores come from
Ohio, she says. I said I know that, because I know you."

He was considered a political maverick by the
News
desk people who began to detect Democratic bias in his copy, definitely too
Left for the
News
Republican posture.

"I'm surrounded by Paid Republican agents,
snobs," he wrote to Nick. "They say that Truman is on his way out
anyway, so why the fuss. Nick, you just can't believe this place. They actually
run the country from Here. It's a Land of Pygmies, with occasional Giants like Marshall. I interviewed him the other day, the old Commander. Never realized what a tall
man He was. And I really admire Acheson. God, I love it here. Except for not
having you around, old Buddy. I'm as happy as a pig in shit. Met a girl, too.
Her father's the publisher of the
Chronicle,
a hind-tit paper, which
after meeting him, I'm convinced has Integrity. The old man drips with it. He
scares the shit out of me. But Myra, that's the gal's name, dotes on him. You
should see the House they live in. It's as big as a Fucking Embassy. They
entertain a lot and I'm hobnobbing with the Rich and Powerful. I'm kissing a
lot of asses, Nick. You should see me. You'd piss in your pants at me in a tux.
I think I'm in Love with Myra."

The letters began to be more infrequent and except for an
occasional brief conversation on the telephone, Nick hardly heard from Charlie
at all. By then, Nick was immersed in his own affair with Margaret, who had
just been promoted to assistant movie reviewer. It was mating time for both of
them, a time when male friendships pale.

"I'm engaged," Charlie finally wrote. "She's
one hell of a gal. I've become pretty fond of the old man, who's trying to get
me to quit the
News
and come work for the
Chronicle
. It's a
stuffy old rag and I hate the thought of being the Son-in-Law, but Myra's working on me as well. I think I'm about to surrender. We're having an engagement
bash at the old homestead, where I have become a regular moocher. I practically
live there. Let's face it. I was born for Luxury. They change the Fucking
towels twice a day, not weekly. That in itself is a cultural shock. As for you,
you Bastard, I'm expecting you down here for the Bash. Just hop the
Congressional Friday night and we'll pick you up in Myra's Lincoln. Prepare to
be impressed. We'll put you up in the Mansh."

He had, of course, jumped at the invitation.

His first glimpse of Myra was at the wheel of a big
cream-colored Lincoln with the Capitol in the background, a glistening
whiteness in the Washington sunset. Even seated, she was clearly tall and
slender, with long athletic legs. Her delicate white fingers clutched the big
wheel as he slid in beside Charlie.

"So you're the famous Nick," Myra said.

Myra had driven them through the
city, pointing out the Capitol, the Senate Office Building, the old House
building, the Library of Congress. The big car rolled quietly through the Mall,
past the National Gallery and the turreted Smithsonian and on into the
deepening glow of sunset, the Washington Monument soft and pink in the
reddening sky. Swinging into Fourteenth Street, she moved the car expertly
through traffic, then turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue to give him a special
view of the White House. By then the lights had gone on and the fountains
danced in front of the Georgian porticos.

"There she is," Charlie had said, "the big
house."

"Is Harry home?" he had asked.

"Up there," Charlie pointed, "on the third
floor."

"It's beautiful," he had said, a lump forming in
his throat. They remained silent until the car drove into the driveway of the
Parker house.

Despite a certain amount of wiseacre banter, Charlie seemed
genuinely changed, more secure, happier, the bad memories gone. Because he
loved Charlie, he could welcome his friend's good fortune while feeling sadness
at the ending of their youthful chapter.

Charlie had taken him through room after high-ceilinged
room to a large Tudor-styled, beamed billiard den, a kind of clubby relic of a
life-style only lived by those of Mr. Parker's age and station. On one wall a
heavy oak credenza exhibited hunting guns, ominous in their splendor of shined
gunmetal and stocks, and one of which, years later, would explode a shell in
Charlie's troubled brain. In his memory, Nick had always invested them with a
kind of inner life. Had they been so lovingly cared for all those years so that
they could be used with such abruptness? Who had taken such care?

At dinner that first night, Mr. Parker sat at one end of
the big oak table in the dining room, his pince-nez shining in the glare of the
chandelier, his hands gripping the carved arms of an antique throne-like chair.
Charlie and Myra sat on either side of him, their heads turning attentively to
the old man's conversation. His speech was crisp and measured, each statement
imperiously delivered; he was a man accustomed to power and to dispensing
wisdom. The setting itself embellished the characterization, the exquisitely
set table with its glistening silver and crystal, the high plaster-sculpted
ceiling, the costumed maid who moved silently around them placing steaming
dishes soundlessly on the lace cloth. In this setting any voice but Mr.
Parker's sounded tremulous and tentative. If Nick had any early suspicion that
the scene had been staged solely for his benefit, to impress Charlie's bosom
friend, it was quickly dispelled. This was Mr. Parker's authentic world, the
self-realization of a willful mind, now in the process, obvious to Nick, of
bestowing the mantle of succession on Charlie Pell. It had been explained
earlier by Charlie, so casually that it seemed of little consequence, that Myra's mother had died years before.

Mr. Parker, Charlie had told Nick, could trace his line to
a branch of the Brahmin world of Boston, and before that to acquisitive Tories
who had persisted in service to the Crown, leaving their seed to begin again in
the dregs of atonement. Perhaps the old guilt was still residual ten
generations later in Mr. Parker's fanatic approach to the democratic ethic. The
early family acquisitiveness stacked wealth upon wealth until other generations
seemed invisible behind the pile and working in the family bank in New England seemed a pallid way to spend one's life. To Mr. Parker, service had more lure
than greed, and he was one of the first traitors to his class to side with Roosevelt in 1932. In Charlie's initial explanation, told as Nick watched Charlie shave
before dinner, the old man had been appalled by the nation's leaders' failure
to cope with the Depression and had, through observing the pain of it at second
hand, become committed to people's needs. Roosevelt had appointed him
Undersecretary of Commerce in the early days of his first administration.

Government and politics had left him singed. The old Tory
strain could not compromise with venality, no matter how well intentioned, and
he was soon left with only his integrity and a firm conviction that the real
enemy of America was a diminution of the values of Jefferson. Materialism
without values, he perceived, was the thickening destructive wave in the
distance. But it was frustrating to preach ethics in abstraction, in the face
of all those empty bellies. Because of his wealth he had been able to maintain
an important salon and, despite the ineffectiveness of his wife, owing
primarily to shyness and later to illness, he could still attract to his lavish
home the cream of Washington society, not only the idle blue bloods, but the
people who held the levers of power.

But for a man like Mr. Parker, Charlie had indicated, it
was like pissing into the wind. All that socializing had only left the old man
adrift on a sea of good liquor and victuals and willing gullets, hardly
offering anything constructive. He began to seek a more effective way to
amplify his ideas. By then, he was more than simply a traitor to his class, he
was a renegade, a stickler for truthful presentation of existing facts. Having
seen the politician and his sinister ways of manipulation, the old man's faith
now resided with the people as the only force available in the democratic
context to control their own destiny. Even Charlie seemed willing to suspend
his newspaperman's cynicism in the face of Mr. Parker's somewhat naïve
singlemindedness, since, by the time Charlie had arrived on the scene, Mr.
Parker had found his voice in the
Chronicle
and his criticisms and ideas
were beginning to find their way to the target.

Ten years before, Mr. Parker had bought the bankrupt
Chronicle
at auction, a low fourth on the hierarchy of Washington newspapers, and since
then, had poured in millions to sustain his voice. If the dent to his fortune
had left him somewhat bemused and perhaps guilt-stricken, at the least, disloyal
to the ancestral line, he could take comfort in the calm purity of his vision.
All this could be inferred from exposure to the man, even during the brief
weekend, with gaps of his life filled in by Charlie's excited explanations.

"The press is the last bastion," Mr. Parker
intoned, his impatience with small talk foreshortening the usual introductory
trivia. "Hitler knew it and went for its jugular at the first opportunity.
Lenin was luckier. The czars had already corroded the effectiveness of the
press. The future of America rests on the First Amendment."

It sounded to Nick like something written in a textbook.
The
News
had taught him a harsher reality.

"Objectivity," Mr. Parker said, lifting the first
wine-glass of the meal, "that's the ticket. The press must wring out all
emotions, squeeze it out of the pulp like water from a wet mop.
Objectivity." He let the word roll on his pallet like the taste of the
wine. "Trust the people to discern the truth. That's the heart of the
system. Leave opinion to the editorial pages. That's the appropriate place to
give one's views in sober, reasoned fashion, based on logic, after weighing
both sides of any question."

Nick watched Charlie as he listened to Mr. Parker. He had
expected signs of exasperation, an eye lifted briefly to the ceiling, a bite of
the lip. But Charlie seemed oddly absorbed as if he had been actually listening
with all his brain cells.

"Impossible to achieve, Mr. Parker," Charlie said
suddenly, giving Nick his first clue. Myra, conditioned to the debate, also
watched its progress with some concentration. "You can't totally eliminate
personality from the reporting of the news. Somebody has to register the facts.
Somebody has to fashion them into words. Somebody has to write a headline.
That's three different lenses, not to mention the way it is presented
graphically on the page by still another person. At the
News..."

Apparently the mention of the name was enough to bring a
light flush to Mr. Parker's cheeks.