by Joan Didion
Crucible events.
Revelations of character.
Absolutely, no question, but the character they reveal is that of a survivor.
Since what happened to Elena McMahon during the summer of 1984 had notably little to do with surviving, let me begin where she would begin.
The night she walked off the 1984 campaign.
You will notice that participants in disasters typically locate the “beginning” of the disaster at a point suggesting their own control over events. A plane crash retold will begin not with the pressure system over the Central Pacific that caused the instability over the Gulf that caused the wind shear at DFW but at some manageable human intersect, with for example the “funny feeling” ignored at breakfast. An account of a 6.8 earthquake will begin not at the overlap of the tectonic plates but more comfortably, at the place in London where we ordered the Spode that shattered the morning the tectonic plates shifted.
Had we just gone with the funny feeling. Had we just never ordered the Spode.
We all prefer the magical explanation.
So it was with Elena McMahon.
She had walked off the campaign the day before the California primary at one-forty in the morning Los Angeles time, she repeatedly told the DIA agent Treat Morrison flew down to take her statement, as if the exact time at which she walked off the campaign had set into inexorable motion the sequence of events that followed.
At the time she walked off the campaign she had not seen her father in some months, she told the DIA agent when he pressed her on this point.
How many months exactly, the agent had said.
I don’t know exactly, she had said.
Two points. One, Elena McMahon did know exactly how many months it had been since she had last seen her father. Two, the exact number of months between the time Elena McMahon had last seen her father and the time Elena McMahon walked off the campaign was, like the exact time at which she walked off the campaign, not significant. For the record: at the time Elena McMahon walked off the 1984 campaign she had not seen her father in twenty-one months. The last time she had seen him was September 1982, either the fourteenth or the fifteenth. She could date this almost exactly because it had been either the day or the day after Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in Lebanon and at the moment the phone rang she had been sitting at her desk doing White House reaction.
In fact she could date it not almost exactly but exactly.
It had been the fifteenth. September 15 1982.
She knew it had been the fifteenth because she had arrived in Washington on the fifteenth of August and given herself a month to find a house and put Catherine into school and get the raise that meant she was no longer a provisional hire (there again a survivor, there again that single-minded efficiency), and at the moment her father called she had just made a note to ask about the raise.
Hey, her father had said when she picked up the telephone. This was his standard way of initiating telephone contact, no name, no greeting, just Hey, then silence. She had outwaited the silence. I’m passing through Washington, he had said then, maybe you could meet me the next half hour or so.
I’m at work, she had said.
Some kind of coincidence, he had said, since that’s where I called you.
Because she was on deadline she had told him to meet her across the street at the Madison. This had seemed a convenient neutral venue but as soon as she walked in and saw him sitting alone in the bar, drumming his fingers insistently on the small table, she knew that the Madison had not been a propitious choice. His eyes were narrowed, fixed on three men in apparently identical pin-striped suits at the next table. She recognized one of the three as White House, his name was Christopher Hormel, he was OMB but for whatever reason he had been hovering officiously around the podium during the noon briefing on Lebanon. That’s not policy, that’s politesse, Christopher Hormel was saying as she sat down, and then he repeated it, as if he had coined a witticism.
Just keep on shoveling it, her father had said.
Christopher Hormel had pushed back his chair and turned.
Spit it out, buddy, what’s your problem, her father had said.
Daddy, she had said, an entreaty.
I have no problem, Christopher Hormel had said, and turned away.
Faggots, her father had said, his fingers roaming the little dish of nuts and toasted cereal for the remaining macadamia nut.
Actually you’re wrong, she had said.
I see you’re buying right into the package here, her father had said. You’re very adaptable, anybody ever mention that?
She had ordered him a bourbon and water.
Say Early Times, he had corrected her. You say bourbon in these faggot bars they give you the Sweet Turkey shit or whatever it’s called, then charge extra. And hey, you, pal, crack out the almonds, save the Cheerios for the queers.
When the drink came he had drained it, then hunched forward. He had a small deal going in Alexandria, he had said. He had a source for two or three hundred nines, Intratecs, lame little suckers he could pick up at seventy-five per and pass on for close to three hundred, the guy he passed them to would double his money on the street but let him, that was street, he didn’t do street, never had, never would.
Wouldn’t need to either.
Because things were hotting up again.
Whole lot of popping going on again.
She had signed the bill.
Hey, Ellie, give us a smile, whole lot of popping.
The next time she saw him was the day she walked off the 1984 campaign.
5
She had not planned to walk off the campaign. She had picked up the plane that morning at Newark and except for the Coke during refueling at Kansas City she had not eaten in twenty-eight hours but she had not once thought of walking away, not on the plane, not at the rally in South Central, not at the meet-and-greet at the Maravilla project, not sitting on the sidewalk in Beverly Hills waiting for the pool report on the celebrity fund-raiser (the celebrity fund-raiser at which most of the guests had turned out to be people she had known in her previous life as Elena Janklow, the celebrity fund-raiser at which in the natural course of her previous life as Elena Janklow she would have been standing under the Regal Rents party tent listening to the candidate and calculating the length of time before she could say good night and drive home to the house on the Pacific Coast Highway and sit on the deck and smoke a cigarette), not even then had she framed the thought I could walk off this campaign.
She had performed that day as usual.
She had filed twice.
She had filed first from the Evergreen operations office in Kansas City and she had filed the update during downtime at the Holiday Inn in Torrance. She had received and answered three queries from the desk about why she had elected not to go with a story the wires were moving about an internal poll suggesting shifts among most-likely-voters. Re your query on last night’s Sawyer-Miller poll, she had typed in response to the most recent query. For third time, still consider sample too small to be significant. She had improved the hour spent sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the pool report on the celebrity fund-raiser by roughing in a draft for the Sunday analysis.
She had set aside the seductive familiarity of the celebrity fund-raiser.
The smell of jasmine.
The pool of blue jacaranda petals on the sidewalk where she sat.
The sense that under that tent nothing bad was going to happen and its corollary, the sense that under that tent nothing at all was going to happen.
That had been her old life and this was her new life and it was imperative that she keep focus.
She had kept focus.
She had maintained momentum.
It would seem to her later that nothing about the day had gone remarkably wrong but it would also seem that nothing about the day had gone remarkably right: for example, her name had been left off the manifest at Newark. There was a new Secret Service rotation and she had pa
cked her press tags and the agent in charge had not wanted to let her on the plane. Where’s the dog, the agent had said repeatedly to no one in particular. The Port Authority was supposed to have a dog here, where’s the dog.
It had been seven in the morning and already hot and they had been standing on the tarmac with the piles of luggage and camera equipment. I talked to Chicago last night, she had said, trying to get the agent to look at her as she groped through her bag trying to find the tags. This was true. She had talked to Chicago the night before and she had also talked to Catherine the night before. Who she had not talked to the night before was her father. Her father had left two messages on her machine in Georgetown but she had not returned the calls. Hey, her father had said the first time he called. Then the breathing, then the click. She located something smooth and hard in her bag and thought she had the tags but it was a tin of aspirin.
We had a real life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t, Catherine had said to her.
Pardon my using your time but I’ve been trying to call your mother and that asshole she lives with refuses to put her on the line, her father had said to her machine the second time he called.
Chicago said I was on the plane, she had said to the agent.
We don’t have a dog, it’ll take all day to sweep this shit, the agent had said. He seemed to be directing this to a sound tech who squatted on the tarmac rummaging through his equipment.
She had touched the agent’s sleeve in an effort to get him to look at her. If somebody would just check with Chicago, she had said.
The agent had retracted his arm abruptly but still had not looked at her.
Who is she, he had said. She hasn’t been cleared by the campaign, what’s she doing here.
The sound tech had not looked up.
Tell him you know me, she had said to the sound tech. She could not think whose tech he was but she knew that she had seen him on the plane. What she had come during the campaign to describe as her advanced age (since no one ever demurred this had become by June an embarrassing reflex, a tic that made her face flush even as she said it) made asking for help obscurely humiliating but that was not important. What was important was getting on the plane. If she was not on the plane she would not be on the campaign. The campaign had momentum, the campaign had a schedule. The schedule would automatically take her to July, August, the frigid domes with the confetti falling and the balloons floating free.
She would work out the business about Catherine later.
She could handle Catherine.
She would call her father later.
Tell him you know me, she repeated to the sound tech’s back.
The sound tech extracted a mult cable from his equipment bag, straightened up and gazed at her, squinting. Then he shrugged and walked away.
I’m always on the plane, I’ve been on the plane since New Hampshire, she said to the agent, and then amended it: I mean on and off the plane. She could hear the note of pleading in her voice. She remembered: the tech was ABC. During Illinois she had been standing on the edge of a satellite feed and he had knocked her down pushing to get in close.
Tough titty, cunt, I’m working, he had said when she objected.
She watched him bound up the steps, two at a time, and disappear into the DC-9. The bruise where he had pushed her was still discolored two months later. She could feel sweat running down beneath her gabardine jacket and it occurred to her that if he had passed her on the way to the steps she would have tripped him. She had worn the gabardine jacket because California was always cold. If she did not find the tags she would not even get to California. The ABC tech would get to California but she would not. Tough titty, cunt, I’m working. She began to unpack her bag on the tarmac, laying out first tapes and notebooks and then an unopened package of panty hose, evidence of her sincerity, hostages to her insistence that the tags existed.
I just didn’t happen to be on the plane this week, she said to the agent. And you just came on. Which is why you don’t know me.
The agent adjusted his jacket so that she could see his shoulder holster.
She tried again: I had something personal, so I wasn’t on the plane this week, otherwise you would know me.
This too was humiliating.
Why she had not been on the plane this week was none of the agent’s business.
I had a family emergency, she heard herself add.
The agent turned away.
Wait, she said. She had located the tags in a pocket of her cosmetics bag and scrambled to catch up with the agent, leaving her tapes and notebooks and panty hose exposed on the tarmac as she offered up the metal chain, the bright oblongs of laminated plastic. The agent examined the tags and tossed them back to her, his eyes opaque. By the time she was finally allowed on the plane the camera crews had divided up the day’s box lunches (there was only the roast beef left from yesterday and the vegetarian, the Knight-Ridder reporter sitting next to her said, but she hadn’t missed shit because the vegetarian was just yesterday’s roast beef without the roast beef) and the aisle was already slippery from the food fight and somebody had rigged the PA system to play rap tapes and in the process disconnected the galley refrigerator. Which was why, when she walked off the campaign at one-forty the next morning in the lobby of the Hyatt Wilshire in Los Angeles, she had not eaten, except for the Coke during refueling at Kansas City and the garnish of wilted alfalfa sprouts the Knight-Ridder reporter had declined to eat, in twenty-eight hours.
Later she would stress that part.
Later when she called the desk from LAX she would stress the part about not having eaten in twenty-eight hours.
She would leave out the part about her father.
Pardon my using your time but I’ve been trying to call your mother and that asshole she lives with refuses to put her on the line.
She would leave out the part about Catherine.
We had a real life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.
She would leave out her father and she would leave out Catherine and she would also leave out the smell of jasmine and the pool of blue jacaranda petals on the sidewalk outside the celebrity fund-raiser.
Small public company going nowhere, bought it as a tax shelter, knew nothing about the oil business, she had written in her notebook on the day in 1968 when she interviewed Wynn Janklow’s father. I remember I said I wanted to take a look at our oil wells, I remember I stopped at a drugstore to buy film for my camera, little Brownie I had, I’d never seen an oil well before and I wanted to take a picture. And so we drove down to Dominguez Hills there and took a few pictures. At that point in time we were taking out oil sands from twelve to fourteen thousand feet, not enough to reveal viscosity. And today the city of Los Angeles is one of the great oil-producing areas in the world, seventeen producing fields within the city limits. Fox, Hillcrest, Pico near Doheny, Cedars, United Artists, UCLA, five hundred miles of pipeline under the city, the opposition to drilling isn’t rational, it’s psychiatric, whole time my son was playing ball at Beverly Hills High School there I was taking out oil from a site just off third base, he used to take girls out there, show them my rockers.
The old man had looked up when the son entered the office.
Just ask him if he didn’t, the old man said.
Beverly Hills crude, the son said, and she married him.
Pick yourself up.
Brush yourself off.
I hadn’t eaten in twenty-eight hours, she would say to the desk.
Not that it mattered to the desk.
6
On the plane to Miami that morning she had experienced a brief panic, a sense of being stalled, becalmed, like the first few steps off a moving sidewalk. Off the campaign she would get no overnight numbers. Off the campaign she would get no spin, no counterspin, no rumors, no denials. The campaign would be en route to San Jose and her seat on the DC-9 w
ould be empty and she was sitting by herself in this seat she had paid for herself on this Delta flight to Miami. The campaign would move on to Sacramento at noon and San Diego at one and back to Los Angeles at two and she would still be sitting in this seat she had paid for herself on this Delta flight to Miami.
This was just downtime, she told herself. This was just an overdue break. She had been pushing herself too hard, juggling too many balls, so immersed in the story she was blind to the story.
This could even be an alternate way into the story.
In the flush of this soothing interpretation she ordered a vodka and orange juice and fell asleep before it came. When she woke over what must have been Texas she could not at first remember why she was on this sedative but unfamiliar plane. RON Press Overnites at Hyatt Wilshire, the Los Angeles schedule had said, and the bus had finally arrived at the Hyatt Wilshire and the press arrangements had been made out of Chicago but her name was not on the list and there was no room.
Chicago fucked up, what else is new, the traveling press secretary had shrugged. So find somebody, double up, wheels up at six sharp.
She recalled a fatigue near vertigo. She recalled standing at the desk for what seemed a long time watching the apparently tireless children with whom she had crossed the country drift toward the bar and the elevator. She recalled picking up her bag and her computer case and walking out into the cold California night in her gabardine jacket and asking the doorman if he could get her a taxi to LAX. She had not called the desk until she had the boarding pass for Miami.
7