The Class

by Erich Segal

  In their absence, the congressional attacks on Kissinger escalated. Ever sensitive to public criticism, the Secretary of State was in despair. One day George overheard Henry talking to Washington on the secure American Embassy phone in Moscow.

  “Mr. President, with due respect, if I have so drastically lost the confidence of my countrymen, then I am prepared to tender my resignation.”

  George sat with bated breath, wondering how Gerald Ford was reacting to Henry’s latest histrionic offer to step down. Someday, he thought, they’re going to call his bluff and he’ll be out. And somebody else will be Secretary of State.

  Maybe me.

  From February on, Washington began to focus increasingly on domestic affairs. For Gerald Ford this meant currying public favor for the upcoming election in November while holding off the threat from Ronald Reagan to usurp the Republican nomination.

  George Keller’s problem was even more litera[unclear]y domestic. Cathy wanted to start a family. While he argued that they had plenty of time, she countered with a reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger.

  “Don’t you have the urge to be a father?” she coaxed.

  “I’d be a lousy one. I’m much too selfish to give a kid the time.”

  “Aha, then you’ve actually thought about it.”

  “Yes, a bit.”

  In fact, he had thought about it more than just a little. From the moment they were married he had been aware that Cathy aspired to motherhood.

  All their friends had children. Even Andrew Eliot, who had jokingly remarked, “You ought to try it, Keller. I mean, if I can do it anyone can.”

  Yet, something visceral in him recoiled at the prospect. Cathy sensed his misgivings and wanted to believe that they were caused by his own abrasive relationship with his father. So she tried to reassure him that, if anything, he would overcompensate to his child.

  To some extent she was right. But that was only part of it. Deep within him was an avenging fury warning that he was too guilty to deserve to be a parent.

  Kissinger and George were sitting in the wings during the second debate between President Ford and his Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter, on October 6, 1976.

  They winced when Ford fumbled with the ill-considered statement that Eastern Europe was “not under Soviet domination.”

  At this point Henry leaned over and whispered sarcastically, “Nice briefing job you did, Dr. Keller.”

  George shook his head. The moment the debate ended he asked Kissinger, “What do you think?”

  The Secretary of State replied, “I think that unless there’s an immediate revolution in Poland, we’re all out of a job.”

  Kissinger was right. On Election Day, the voters of America sent Jimmy Carter to the White House and Gerald Ford to the golf courses of Palm Springs. Washington would now be a Democratic town—at least for the next four years. And those closely allied with the Republican cause like George Keller had no place in it: Ironically, George’s office would be taken over by his first Harvard patron, Zbigniew Brzezinski. (He wondered fleetingly if he hadn’t choosen the wrong horse.)

  Cathy was secretly delighted at the turn of events, since she hated her native city. And she was jealous of her husband’s mistress, politics.

  After his initial disappointment, George started looking for a new career. He rejected invitations from several universities to teach government and several publishing houses to write a book about his White House experiences. As far as he was concerned, they were by no means over.

  Instead, he opted to become an international trade consultant to the powerful New York investment firm of Pierson Hancock. The potential remuneration was beyond his wildest dreams.

  As he joked to Cathy, “Now I’m worse than a capitalist. I’m a plutocrat.”

  She smiled and thought, wouldn’t it be nice if you became a parent, too. And with maternity in mind, she convinced her husband that they should live in the country.

  George at last acceded and they bought a Tudor house in Darien, Connecticut. It meant a lot of commuting for him each day, but at least he got to read the papers thoroughly before arriving at his office. To discover what was happening in the world that he no longer helped to run.

  Two years after moving up from Washington, he had more money than he knew what to do with. And his wife had the same plethora of empty time.

  Despite George’s urging, she did not take the New York Bar exam and seek a job with a metropolitan law firm. Instead, she qualified in Connecticut and took a one-day-a-week lectureship at nearby Bridgeport University law school.

  George pretended to ignore the significance of her desire to remain at home. And Cathy’s sadness was compounded by a growing bitterness that he didn’t trust her enough to believe she was taking The Pill. Such lack of confidence is hardly conducive to a good marriage. And indeed, theirs was fast becoming a very unhappy one.

  George sensed her increasing discontent and, instead of confronting it, deliberately fashioned a lifestyle that managed to avoid the issue. He began to work later and later—and come home drunker and drunker.

  The New Haven Railroad may have been falling to pieces, but the scotch in its club cars still held many a commuter together. Or at least gave George that illusion.

  Suburbia without children was stultifying. All of Cathy’s contemporaries were busily involved in the activities of their offsprings’ lives, and at lunch discussed little else. Thus, she felt like a double outcast. An alien among mothers, and a stranger to her own husband.

  “Are you happy, George?” she asked one evening, as she was ferrying him from the train station.

  “What kind of question is that?” he asked, slurring his words slightly.

  “I mean, aren’t you sick of pretending that everything’s okay between us? Don’t you hate having to travel all the way out here just for boring old me?”

  “Not at all. Get a lot of work done on the train.…”

  “Come on, George, you’re not that drunk. Why don’t we discuss our so-called marriage?”

  “What’s there to discuss? You want a divorce? You can have a divorce. You’re still a good-looking girl. Find a brand-new husband in no time.”

  Cathy felt too upset to be angry. She pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center, so that she could concentrate on this crucial conversation without crashing into a tree.

  She then turned and asked him straight out, “So that’s it, then—it’s over?”

  He looked at her and, in one of his rare expressions of true feelings, said, “You know I really don’t want to make you unhappy.”

  “I thought it was I who was making you miserable.”

  “No, Cathy. No. No. No.”

  “Then what is it, George? What’s come between us?”

  He stared straight ahead for a moment, then half-buried his face in his hands and said softly, “My life is shit.”

  “In what way?” she asked quietly.

  “In every way. I’m taking it out on you because I’m miserable doing what I’m doing. It’s like running on a treadmill. I’m going nowhere. I’m forty-two years old and already a burned-out case.”

  “That’s not true, George,” she said sincerely. “You’re brilliant. Your best years are still ahead.”

  He shook his head. “No, you can’t make me believe that. Somewhere along the line I missed my chance. Things are never going to be much different than they are right now.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “George, what we need isn’t a divorce, it’s a second honeymoon.”

  He gazed at her, and consciously reaffirmed what he had always known subliminally. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  “Do you think we have a chance?”

  “As you boys say on Wall Street, George,” she smiled, “I’m still bullish about our future. All you need is a little ‘sabbatical’ to give you a chance to get a second wind.”

  “A sabbatical—from what?”

  “From your unquenchable and tem
porarily frustrated ambition, my love.”

  The Kellers’ grand tour of Europe was not quite the total holiday that Cathy had wanted. But it was enough to rekindle hope for the future of their relationship.

  To begin with, she taught George his first lesson in how to enjoy life. To take satisfaction from what he had already accomplished.

  For in every country they visited, high government officials welcomed them in royal fashion. And it bolstered George’s ego to see himself still respected, even though he was out of office.

  In fact, his political antennae proved to be shrewder than ever. In London, he and Cathy dined with Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, M.P., who would be leading the Conservative Party in the next general election. She complimented George’s views on geopolitics, and Cathy’s hat.

  The same was true in Germany and in France, where the newly installed foreign minister, Jean François-Poncet, entertained them in his home—a Gallic rarity.

  Their final stop was Brussels. While Cathy was out doing some last-minute shopping, George had lunch with his old colleague from the NSC days, Alexander Haig, now Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. With his usual candor, the general pronounced his judgment on the current White House occupant.

  “Carter’s really messing up. His foreign policy is a disaster. It’s an experiment in obsequiousness. We’ve got to behave like the superpower we are. That’s the only way to make the Soviets respect us. I tell you, George, Carter’ll be a sitting duck in 1980.”

  “Who do you think we’ll run against him?”

  Haig replied with a sly grin, “Well, I’ve been thinking of giving it a shot.”

  “That’s great,” George responded with shining enthusiasm. “I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “Thanks. And I’ll tell you something—if I make it, my Secretary of State is sitting right here at this table.”

  “I’m very flattered.”

  “Come on, Keller,” said Haig, “can you name anyone more qualified?”

  “No, frankly,” George responded mischievously.

  He could have flown home without a plane.

  If in the 1960s Danny Rossi had become a household name, in the late 1970s he became a household face. His charismatic visage was now beamed regularly into millions of homes, thanks to an enormously successful—and prizewinning—series of musical documentaries made for Public Television.

  First there was a baker’s dozen of programs on the instruments of the orchestra. This was followed by a history of the symphony. Both, of course, had book tie-ins, and to the many strings on his bow Danny now added that of bestselling author.

  “Maria, I’ve got to talk to you seriously about Danny.” They were sitting in Terry Moran’s office at the station.

  In the three years she had been working for WHYY-TV, Maria had risen from assistant director to full-fledged producer. And it was rumored that the station president would soon elevate her to program director.

  Their glass of sherry together on Friday afternoons had now become a weekly ritual. They would go over various crises and indulge in fantasies of what they could do if only they had a bigger budget.

  “I feel I have the right to say this,” Terry continued, “because now you’re not some neophyte. And to put it bluntly, I feel Danny’s being unfaithful. To Philadelphia, I mean—and us. Look, I can understand why he’d want to film his first series at KCET in L.A. He directs the Philharmonic there, and there’s a huge pool of TV talent in Tinseltown. But why the hell did he have to do his history of the symphony in New York?”

  “Terry, you can’t imagine the pressure they put on him at WNET. Besides, I think Lenny Bernstein was working behind the scenes.”

  Moran slammed his desk. “But dammit, man for man, our orchestra’s as good as theirs, if not better. That series earned a fortune for the supplying station, and we could really use the dough. Most of all, I feel Danny should show some allegiance to the city that first made him a conductor. Don’t you agree?”

  “Terry, this isn’t fair. You’re putting me on the spot.”

  “Maria, you’ve known me long enough to realize I play fair and square. I’m not talking to Danny Rossi’s wife, I’m complaining to my business partner. Objectively speaking, don’t you think he should do his next TV project here?”

  “Objectively speaking, yes. But I—” She grew self-conscious and could not continue her sentence. Though in the past months she had received more genuine warmth and support from Terry, she still felt an atavistic loyalty to the man who was legally her husband.

  “I mean, from all those interviews I read in the papers, you and he make those big career decisions together.” Moran hesitated and then added, “Or shouldn’t I believe what I read?”

  Maria grew reticent and wondered what else he had been reading in the press.

  Actually, there had been times, after a long session in the cutting room, when she had almost felt brave enough to speak to Terry of her domestic unhappiness. After all, he had already confided in her. She knew about his divorce, which had shaken his staunchly Catholic parents. And how badly he missed his children.

  These long conversations had made her realize that they were both reluctant to leave because neither had any real home to go to.

  Still, she had been too shy to initiate the conversation, assuming—perhaps hoping—that sooner or later Terry would broach the subject.

  And now here they were perilously close to trespassing on the most intimate details of her personal life.

  “Why so silent?” he inquired amicably. “Or are you thinking of the best approach to catch Mr. Rossi in our butterfly net?”

  “I’ll be frank,” Maria began. “I’m a bit reluctant to broach this with Danny because it kind of blurs the lines of demarcation between our separate work and our … marriage.”

  She hesitated. And then suddenly added, “Hey look, on second thought, I agree about his loyalty to Philadelphia. I’ll bring up the idea of his doing a series for us, if we can come up with a concept.”

  “Well, Maria, you’ve got the creative brain. What do you think Danny Rossi should do for a television encore?”

  Instinctively she knew. “Well, if I can say so, he is one of the best pianists of his generation—”

  “The very best,” Moran interrupted.

  “Anyway, I would think he’d be the perfect person to do the history of keyboard music.”

  “Something like ‘from harpsichord to synthesizer,’ ” Terry replied, kindled by the notion. “I think that’s absolutely fantastic. If you snare him, I’ll squeeze every penny from our budget to give him the lushest deal this station ever offered.”

  Maria nodded and stood up. “Of course, he’ll probably say no,” she said quietly.

  “Well, if he does, I’ll love you all the same.”

  To her surprise, the idea excited Danny. “I’d have only two ironclad conditions,” he said. “First, the tapings have got to be tailored to fit the days I’m already committed to being in Philly.”

  “Obviously,” she agreed.

  “And second, I want you to be the producer.”

  “Why me?” she asked, somewhat taken aback. “Wouldn’t that be uncomfortable?”

  “Hey listen,” he replied, “if we’re going to match the level of the other series, I’ve got to have the best possible studio team. And you are without question the savviest producer they have.”

  “Have you been reading my clippings?”

  “No, I’ve been running some of your videotapes late at night. I think your work’s terrific.”

  “All right, Rossi,” she replied, unable to mask her delight. “But I warn you—you play temperamental artist with me and I’ll shoot the whole damn thing from your bad side.”

  “Okay, boss.” He smiled. And then added, “Hey, we could tout this thing as coming ‘from the team that brought you Arcadia.’ ”

  Maria lay awake that night wondering what was on Danny’s mind. She hadn’t thought her argument was that persuasiv
e. To be honest, however good their studio facilities now were, they were still no match for New York or L.A. And was that quip about Arcadia anything but a casual joke?

  They had been so happy in those Harvard days, their collaboration animated by their passion.

  “How does he do it?” an astounded Terry Moran exclaimed, as they sat side by side in the control booth.

  “Well,” Maria answered proudly, “he knows the keyboard repertoire backwards and forwards. And, as you can see, he loves to drive himself.”

  Even she had not been able to persuade Danny to devote a full day for taping each of the thirteen episodes. To the amazement of the crew, who had never seen such prodigious energy, he insisted on doing three hour-long programs in a single day—and night—session.

  “God, where does he get the strength?” wondered the engineer. “I mean, I sit here at the end of the day with my face melting on the control board. And he’s out there talking and playing like some virtuoso Peter Pan.”

  “Yes,” Maria agreed thoughtfully, “there is a bit of the Peter Pan in him.”

  But there was more than that. There was Dr. Whitney’s cocktail, too. In fact, Danny could no longer fly on merely one weekly injection. So the doctor had provided him with capsules that included, among other things, Methadrine to tide him over.

  The second program of that session, an hour on Chopin, was musically and verbally flawless. With typical Rossi bravado, he’d left the hardest segment for the very end: an introduction to that keyboard acrobat, Franz Liszt.

  Danny was munching a sandwich in his dressing room when Maria poked her head in.

  “Mr. Rossi,” she said, “I don’t think you could possibly top that one. Why don’t we wrap and do Liszt next time?”

  “No way, Madame Producer. I want to finish this taping with a tour de force.”

  “Aren’t you tired at all?”

  “A bit,” he confessed. “But when I see camera one light up, it’ll turn me right on.”

  “I bet you wish Liszt were still alive, Danny.” She smiled. “I somehow think you’d like to see his face when you outdo him at his own cadenzas.”