Watergate (27 page)

Charlie Wiggins, the California congressman, was providing her with additional cover, laughing over her tale of how the president had called last night, while she was getting ready for the Kennedy Center concert, to complain that a line from the last draft of his speech seemed to be missing. Could she help him find it? “ ‘Not unless you want to come over here and zip me up,’ I told him. He seemed to think about it for a second, too—until I reminded him that I live in the Watergate!”

Wiggins was enjoying the story, but Rose herself had been miffed last night. Honest to God, what did he expect? She’d been half-prepared to hear him ask that she spend the weekend taking care of his eighty-year-old aunt Jane, the one who’d taught him piano back in Whittier and had come to Washington for the ceremonies.

Telling the tale through a second glass of champagne was beginning to make her feel better; in fact, all at once she felt a flush of well-being.
Truth be told, she’d never been prouder of Richard Nixon, even if he sometimes irritated her the way a husband might. Her one wish right now was that Wiggins would ask her to dance—she really missed Don at a moment like this—but the congressman was getting the high sign from his wife.

And Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, here were the Magruders, coming round the dinosaur. Well, the wife was even prettier than Rose had imagined—sort of like a runner-up for Miss America—and it was hard not to like the kids, who seemed bored and well-behaved as they got introduced to “Miss Woods.” But Junior remained insufferable. She supposed she should congratulate him on the whole inaugural shebang, but couldn’t bring herself to.

“You don’t look any older than you did in ’60,” she said, after resisting his kiss of her cheek a little too evidently. “I remember you from when the campaign passed through Kansas City. What were you doing? Selling women’s stockings?”

“Paper products.”

“Jeb’s thinking about running for California secretary of state!” the overexcited missus chimed in. Rose could tell from hubby’s expression that this particular cat wasn’t supposed to be out of the bag.

“Really?” asked Rose. “It’s a shame Charlie Wiggins’s wife snatched him away. He might be able to help you out there.”

“I’m making a trip to talk to Reagan and to Bob Finch,” said Magruder. “We’ll see.”

“You do keep a busy schedule,” said Rose, hoping he took it for a dig at his impending appearance in Sirica’s courtroom, where he’d no doubt have to swear he’d never given Liddy an order to commit the burglary. She already knew that nothing was going to come of this California idea; she’d heard that HRH was planning to rescue him with some job in the Commerce Department.

The wife broke the silence. “Well, Rose, I hope we’ll see you at the White House church service in the morning. We’re so thrilled to be going!”

“I went to five o’clock mass this afternoon so I can sleep in tomorrow.” She said it as casually as she could, to leave the impression she saw the president too regularly for such an invitation to mean anything.

Rose’s eyes scoured the room, hoping to catch sight of Ed Brooke, the best dancer she’d ever met in Washington. He liked to joke with her that some stereotypes were true, but there was nothing jazzy and jivey about him. All his moves were out of Fred Astaire and Vernon Castle—sophisticated and sleek; just the way he spoke. Could she ever use him now!

An enormous roar from the crowd finally put her conversation with the Magruders out of its misery. They waved goodbye to Rose while the source of the excitement, Martha Mitchell, entered the big room. After hugging Kissinger and some astronaut just back from the Moon, she began signing autographs, while the light of a hundred Instamatic flash cubes bounced off the silver tinsel hanging from the ceiling. “Honey,” Martha cried to a big bald businessman, “you can snap me next to the dinosaur—so long as you don’t ask which of us is older!”

Once boredom overcame her, as it always did within minutes, she began a push for the main ballroom. The crowd made way for Martha, dragging Kissinger into her wake. He followed along until he came to the VIP boxes, which overhung the ballroom from a height no greater than the upper berths on a train.

Elliot Richardson stood in one of them, telling a reporter that he’d tried to do a bit of jitterbugging right where he was rather than venture into the mob scene below. “Still, it’s rather nice that the people here get a chance to see the faces that belong to all those names they’re always seeing in the newspaper.”

“How should I identify you?” the reporter asked. “With HEW, or as secretary of defense designate?” The confirmation hearings for all the new and repositioned Nixon nominees had gotten a little backed up.

“The latter, I should think,” said Richardson, leaning over to talk to Kissinger, several feet below. He’d seen him yesterday, too, during the “Heritage Groups” reception over at the Corcoran, where Henry had told him, as a hundred ethnics swirled around his tall Brahmin presence, “At last you know what the Jewish quota at Harvard felt like.”

Richardson bid goodbye to the reporter and pointed to a little doorway that could bring the national security advisor up into the box. A moment later Henry was at his side, first bemoaning how he had to return to Paris in the morning and then confessing his latest anxieties.

“He’s been talking to Haldeman about the disposition of my papers. Who’s entitled to what when the time comes.”

“Posterity is just around the corner,” mused Richardson.

“Do you think he still has confidence in me?”

Richardson’s reply was lost in a sudden new cacophony, when the ballroom’s two orchestras, supposed to be alternating, struck up different numbers at the same time. Kissinger and Richardson watched Ehrlichman dance with his daughter to the competing strains of “Picnic” and “Moon River” until another great roar from the crowd made everyone, even Martha Mitchell, look toward one of the doorways.

A false alarm: it was Agnew who’d just arrived, not the president.

“A heartbeat away,” said Richardson.

“And about fifteen IQ points,” replied Kissinger.

Alice Longworth was falling asleep with the television on. The station had been showing film of the parade, the announcer remarking on Dick’s unusually happy expression and then pointing out the empty seat in the front row that had been reserved for none other than herself.

As her fever persisted, thought and dream began to merge, making her believe she was actually
at
the parade and that it was 1957, Dick’s second inaugural as vice president. The little Nixon girls were shrinking from her while Pat whispered to them that they shouldn’t be afraid of the old lady.

Old?
Why, Alice had been only seventy-two that morning, with her own daughter much on her mind: poor Paulina, alone on Twenty-eighth Street, a drunk’s young widow now drinking herself through despair. The dream of ’57 ran on—past the overdose and the body’s discovery to Dick’s shouldering of the coffin; past her coming to his study on Tilden Street, clutching the detestable
Post
article with its reference to the empty bottle of sleeping pills.

This dream, like the fever, came and went for two more days, during which Alice sometimes thought Joanna, her granddaughter, was really Paulina passing in and out of the room.

And then, on the twenty-third, the fever at last broke. The flu and the dream went with it, and she was lucid once more, back in the here and now of 1973. As Janie fed her broth, Joanna came in with news that the
first lady was on the telephone. Both housekeeper and granddaughter expressed doubt that she was well enough to take the call, but Alice overruled them: “Don’t give me those
looks
. I know which first lady it is. I know it’s not Mrs. Taft, and I know it’s not Eleanor. It’s Pat. Tell her to hold the line while you bring me the phone.”

They did as they were instructed.

“You were beginning to give us a scare!” said Mrs. Nixon.

“Not to worry. I’m paper thin, but I’ve decided to stick around for another year or two.”

“Well, that’s the best news yet,” Pat declared. After a pause, she added, “What a combination of the sad and wonderful we’ve had while you were under the weather!”

“I haven’t heard any of it. Give me the sad stuff first,” said Alice, realizing that Pat might well have a different idea than she about what was sad and what was happy.

“I’m sorry to tell you that Lyndon Johnson died last night.” Pat said it slowly, thinking to cushion any shock.

“I imagine there’ll be loud grief in the animal kingdom,” responded Alice. “Will they be putting him in the Rotunda?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Pat imagined that even Johnson’s corpse might still attract pickets, but offering such an observation seemed rude, so she settled for saying, “It would be such a long trip for Lady Bird.”

“You said there was good news, too.”

“Yes!” cried the first lady. “And it’s brand new. Dick’s going on television tonight to make the announcement. Henry Kissinger is on his way back from Paris with the agreement.”

Alice remained silent.

“The war is over,” Pat explained. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

Perfectly aware of which war she spoke, Alice nonetheless thought back to the Paris Treaty of 1898, which had settled the Spanish-American War; and to the Versailles treaty after that; and then to her half brother, Ted Jr., dropping dead of a heart attack after hitting the beach at Normandy when he was fifty-six.

She sighed in a way that alarmed Janie and Joanna. She shut her eyes and waited a moment, still lost in thought, until she at last told Pat: “I want you to enjoy it, dear.”

“Mr. LaRue is downstairs,” the doorman announced.

The reply coming through the telephone was loud enough for the arriving guest to hear. “Send him up!” cried Martha Mitchell. “And tell him not to mind the elevator lookin’ like a horse stall!”

To LaRue’s confusion, the elevator car did contain a considerable litter of hay and straw—as well as the mayor of New York City, John V. Lindsay, wearing a tuxedo. “Didn’t have time to change,” he said to LaRue with his movie-star smile.

“There’s a little ole
square dance
goin’ on two flights up,” explained Martha, as she took LaRue’s topcoat. “A birthday party for Mr.
Teddy Kennedy
.”

Martha rarely engaged in lengthy exposition, but allowed that the senator’s sister and brother-in-law, Jean and Stephen Smith, lived in the building. From the open living room window of the Mitchells’ apartment, LaRue could hear an old-fashioned square-dance caller speaking commands into a microphone: “Bow to your partner!”

“Just don’t
drown
her!” shouted Martha, to the unseen guest of honor, who was turning forty-one. Down below on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, near the building’s canvas canopy, a handful of tabloid photographers and TV cameras were hoping to catch late arrivals.

“That poor little wife of his, Joansie, is travelin’ out West, so I wonder who they’ve got lined up to be Mr. Teddy Bear’s
birthday present
tonight.”

LaRue just smiled.

“Sit down, honey,” Martha ordered. “Mr. Mitchell’s on the phone.” She mixed LaRue a drink. “I understand that Miss Triciabelle and Mr. Eddie Coxman are about to move smack into my neighborhood. Right down Eighty-fourth Street, from what I hear.”

LaRue wondered if this development amounted to cachet or competition;
either way, he was sure Martha found it nowhere near as exciting as having Jackie Onassis just one block away.

“So, honey,” she said, settling herself next to him. “Is Mr. President doin’ any work at all?”

“He’s mostly scramblin’ to figure out how he can sell Congress on givin’ reconstruction aid to North Vietnam.” LaRue laughed softly at the thought of how only two months ago everybody in the White House had been worried about funds for the war being cut off.

“You always
love
the one you
hurt
,” said Martha, conclusively. The only topic she wanted to pursue right now was Richard Nixon’s sudden new social life in Washington. The president and first lady had, in recent days, been photographed dining out at Trader Vic’s, visiting Alice Longworth in advance of her eighty-ninth birthday, and going to the theater with Tricia to see Debbie Reynolds in a musical whose wholesomeness was above reproach.

LaRue smiled. “It’s kinda like the ‘peace dividend.’ Or normalcy. He’s showin’ that, with the war over, even he’s allowed to enjoy himself. I doubt it’ll last long.”

“The man I see in these pictures is
not
havin’ a good time,” said Martha. “We are dealin’ with a most irregular Joe here.” She was back at the window, leaning out and giving the photographers a chance to catch on. “No
Vertigo
for me!” she suddenly cried, pulling herself back in. “Neither the condition
nor
the movie, which is what Mr. President and old Thelma are gonna be watching at Camp David tonight. That comes straight from Mr. President himself, I’ll have you know. He told Mr. Mitchell so when they talked an hour ago. Oh, yes, Mr. President still calls when he
wants
something. Tell me, are you and Mr. Mitchell still tryin’ to raise money to keep everybody quiet and protect him?”