Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

  This was the question Clarine had anticipated since she’d given it to him last September. On that day, he’d never persisted in asking it—probably because not asking seemed to restore an appearance of being in control. And maybe, up until this moment, he’d preferred whatever scenarios and explanations he thought up himself.

  She began to tell the story she had prepared. “Your wife gave it to me.”

  “That’s not possible. She was wearing it the day she died. She had it on when I drove her to the airport.”

  “Your memory is playing tricks on you. I got in touch with her, met her on one of her trips into the District that fall. That’s when I got the pin.”

  She knew he would believe the sentences she’d just spoken. She could see his awareness of his own mental fragility; he could scarcely doubt that he was sometimes imagining things. And as for her knowing Dorothy? Well, Clarine reasoned, if he’d not asked his wife to tell him the size of the payments, he would certainly believe that Dorothy had kept this little secret, too.

  “Why did you contact her?” asked Hunt.

  “For the same reason I later approached you. I wanted to get that envelope back.” She pointed to his pocket. “Have you read what’s inside it?”

  “Yes.”

  Fear—the least familiar of Clarine’s emotions—now clutched her. Suddenly she was not ready to hear what the letter contained.

  “It’s a report about some shooting from the 1950s,” explained Hunt, obviously frustrated by its irrelevance to himself. “People are referred to by letters instead of names. ‘Mr. X’ and so forth. Doesn’t even mention a place.”

  “Yes,” Clarine said evenly, hoping he would go no further.

  “It has nothing to do with Watergate.”

  “I never said it did.”

  Hunt bristled. “You tried to suggest otherwise in every possible way.” Think of the Rosetta Stone.

  Clarine pointed to the envelope. “What’s in there is only about someone’s old private torment.”

  “You deceived me.”

  “Of course I did. I didn’t think you’d help me any other way.”

  Hunt said nothing.

  “I tried to act as intelligently as she would have,” Clarine added.

  “Who?” asked Hunt.

  “Your wife.”

  From the time she was a girl, long before LaRue ever walked into the law office in Jackson, Clarine could always spot heartbreak. She knew that she was looking at it now.

  “Why did she give you the pin?” Hunt asked.

  “I admired it.”

  “And she just gave it to you.”

  “Yes, she was touched by the story I told her, about that person’s private agony. You already know what it was about if you’ve read the contents.”

  Hunt’s eyes moistened. He was imagining this conversation that she and Dorothy had never had. Dorothy would have listened to Miss Lander’s tale of a lover’s woe and given her the little piece of jewelry she’d remarked upon a moment earlier. He could see it happening.

  He handed Clarine the envelope, as if under the circumstances he himself could do no less.

  “Did my wife speak of me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she love me?”

  “Very much.”

  Lie upon lie upon lie. But Clarine felt even less guilty than she imagined Richard Nixon had while piling up the stack of falsehoods now toppling over on him.

  Hunt picked up his sunglasses and rose to leave. Clarine quietly followed him to the front door. “Thank you,” she said at last, simply, as if he were a neighbor who’d dropped in to bring her a piece of mail that had been delivered to the wrong apartment.

  He nodded and headed off toward the elevator. She could hear him murmuring, as if talking to someone he imagined walking beside him. She realized that he would drift among three or four different realities in the time it took him to get down to the lobby.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  AUGUST 8–9, 1974

  THE WEST WING; 2009 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE; WATERGATE WEST; LINCOLN SITTING ROOM

  Too busy to indulge in disbelief, Rose continued packing her office. Two cardboard boxes were filling up with items she would take home to the Watergate, among them a pretty enamel strawberry that Don Carnevale had had made to match her Secret Service code name.

  Steve Bull had asked her to watch the resignation speech with him in the East Wing theater, but she’d said no, just as she’d declined Len Garment’s invitation to join him and Buzhardt and Safire for dinner at the Sans Souci. She’d given the same excuse Ray Price had made: she needed to stick around in case the boss needed any last-minute changes to the speech. But things had not been good between her and Garment since last fall, when the gap on the tape was discovered and he brusquely told her it was time she got a lawyer. On top of everything else—the Sans Souci! Were they kidding? With Edward Bennett Williams and the whole Democratic crowd sure to be on the premises, crowing their lungs out?

  Well, thank God she no longer needed Charlie Rhyne or any other lawyer. Jaworski had sent word three weeks ago that she wouldn’t be prosecuted—a small bone flung toward the crumbling White House, probably to show how fair and gallant the special prosecutor could be. What she did need tonight, badly, was a drink, but she’d allowed herself no more than a glass of what somebody in the speechwriters’ office told her was a “light beer,” something new. She’d been working on the president’s remarks for two days, and if Price or the boss wanted one more comma, or one less adjective, she was prepared to retype the whole thing yet again.

  But there would be, of course, no further draft. In less than ten minutes, Richard Nixon would deliver what he had on the desk, and it would all—the whole last twenty-three years—be finished.

  When she’d sat down at the large-type machine two nights ago, she’d been unable to stop thinking of ’52. The Fund story had broken, the Checkers speech had been made, and Eisenhower still couldn’t decide what to do—how the hell had he ever handled D-Day? The boss, sick with frustration, had asked her to send a telegram with his resignation from the ticket. She took down the message in shorthand and gave it to Murray Chotiner, the toughest guy on the campaign, God rest his soul, knowing that he would rip it up. Which he did. And if he hadn’t, she would have snatched it back and ripped it up herself.

  But there was no way to stop tonight’s broadcast.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of going to the West Hall to watch with Pat and the girls and Bebe. She would sit in front of the television here. She wouldn’t hover outside the Oval Office, either. She would leave that to Kissinger, who was already there, ready to walk the boss back to the Residence after it was done. Henry had been making a huge show of telling everyone he would resign as secretary of state if the president were ever put on trial. Big deal! Though for sheer lack of manliness nothing topped the calls HRH had been making to the White House all day—angling for a pardon, Rose felt sure. She only hoped Haig would stand firm and not put him through tonight.

  Jesus, Mary, Joseph.

  She reached for her rosary as the boss came onscreen in the same blue suit he’d worn on Soviet TV two years ago. She fingered one of the beads and whispered a fast “Hail, Mary,” praying that he would make it all the way through the pages she’d typed and retyped so many times.

  I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interest of America first …

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Don’t worry,” said Haig. “He won’t cry. But you go ahead.”

  And then the general left her alone, even though he was the only one with whom she could bear sharing this moment.

  I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office.

  Alice awoke after midnight. Horns continued to honk in D
upont Circle, where she imagined that the young people were even now boogalooing in the fountain. She had slept through Dick’s speech but hadn’t really needed to hear it. She’d known it was coming ever since Joe called late last night, very excited and self-important, to tell her that the White House switchboard had earlier rung him up in order to locate Kissinger, who, sure enough, had been sitting right at Joe’s deadly-dull dinner table. The secretary had then rushed back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a long, maudlin, slightly premature farewell to his boss. They’d toasted each other with the bottle of brandy they’d opened after receiving the China invitation three years before. Joe was thrilled, positively rejuvenated as a journalist, to have gotten these details from Kissinger just afterwards—even if he had to agree not to put the tale of Dick’s rambling, tearful behavior into print. But he’d told her. Dick asking Kissinger to pray with him! Could anything be more revolting?

  Alice managed to shuffle—you couldn’t call it walking anymore—to the open window. She stuck her head out. It was cool for August and the drizzle refreshed her. Once she retracted her noggin, she turned on the television, which was still covering the evening as if it were election night, the reporters piling trivia upon trivia.

  One of the networks was now replaying the speech itself, for what she supposed was the fifth time:

  To those who have stood with me during these past difficult months, to my family, my friends, to many others who joined in supporting my cause because they believed it was right, I will be eternally grateful for your support.

  She could read his face, even through the fuzzy screen of her aging TV, could see the darkness coming up through the creases—what she’d noticed all those years ago in Rock Creek as he’d helped to shoulder Paulina’s coffin.

  Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood …”

  Of course. Father had muscled his way into one more historical event.

  She turned off the television and went looking for a box of White House ephemera that not long ago had been organized by her granddaughter: recent items, menus and place cards and such from the last thirty or forty years. Rooting around in what she found, she came up with the invitation to last year’s inaugural events, all of which the flu had kept her from. There on an attached sheet were telephone numbers for Miss Woods’s office, as well as her home—which Alice was welcome to use for any and all assistance with arrangements.

  She dialed the home number.

  Rose had been in the apartment for fifteen minutes—sitting in the dark, TV off, no drink in her hand—when the phone rang. She ignored it after making sure it wasn’t the special White House line, which would be disconnected tomorrow. No, it was her own phone in the bedroom, probably her brother calling, or one of her nieces or nephews, checking to see how she was holding up. Or maybe it was Bob Gray, hoping to cheer her with a dinner invitation—probably to the Sans Souci!

  She needed to get out of her dress and into bed if she really intended to be back at her desk by eight a.m., but she was too exhausted to move. At least she could dispense with her nightly cold-cream application: her tears would only run right down it.

  This caller wouldn’t quit! The ringing persisted—probably a crank, though she of course wasn’t in the book. The noise unnerved her, as if the Boston Strangler were keeping his finger on the doorbell. Unable to stand it any longer, she picked up the receiver, determined to let whoever it was really have it.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Mrs. Longworth. There’s no need to shout.”

  Rose was on the verge of replying, “And I’m Marie of Rumania,” but the voice was unmistakable, and she knew about the old lady’s nocturnal habits. “You startled me” was all she said.

  “It’s only one o’clock, my dear. I’ve been watching television.”

  “What did you think of the speech?” Rose found herself asking, automatically. It was the question she put to everyone whenever the boss spoke on TV; she would ask it pointedly, making sure people knew there was only one right answer. But now it came out almost pleadingly, with a weird sort of feebleness.

  “Passable,” said Mrs. Longworth. “Are you still dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. So am I. Do you run a car?”

  “Yes,” said Rose, surprised by the question and its antique formulation.

  “Good,” Mrs. Longworth said again. “Be here in ten minutes.”

  “What?”

  “Honk the horn. Do not ring the bell. You’ll wake Janie, who’s the only one here besides me. My granddaughter is out celebrating with the rest of the city.”

  “Are you all right?” Rose asked.

  “Of course I am,” Alice snapped. “I suspect I’m in better shape than you are. Better than your boss, too.”

  “He’ll be all right,” replied Rose, prepared to scold even this old waxwork if she, too, deserted Richard Nixon.

  “What do you suppose he’s doing right now?” asked Alice.

  “The same as he was half an hour ago: making calls, up in the Lincoln Sitting Room. That’s where I said good night to him.” She paused, wanting to disclose some of what she’d seen; needing to be, for once, the least bit indiscreet. “He keeps saying ‘I hope I haven’t let you down’ to everyone on the other end of the line.”

  “Is Pat up?” asked Alice.

  “She’ll be up all night. Packing some of their things—with less help than you’d imagine.”

  “I won’t disturb her. I want to see only him.”

  See? “But, Mrs. Longworth—”

  “You said he was still up making calls. I suspect it’s a long list.”

  “You may even be on it,” said Rose, hoping to dissuade the old lady from this ridiculous idea that she’d apparently formed. “He knows how late you stay up.”

  “My dear, one doesn’t sit around waiting for the telephone to ring. I imagine you’ve done too much of that in your life.”

  Being called an old maid by this gargoyle!

  “Good,” said Alice, when Rose didn’t respond. “He won’t mind a brief interruption. You’ll take me to him. See you in ten. Fifteen at most. Don’t ring the bell.”

  Rose heard her hang up the phone.

  At 1:15 a.m. Alice left her mansion, not bothering to lock the door, and proceeded with small, purposeful steps toward Rose’s car. A young couple necking in the moonlit bus shelter by the curb looked up, startled at the sight of such an old lady in a hat, as they’d been startled a minute before by the sound of Rose’s horn.

  “So,” said Alice, as soon as the president’s secretary had helped her into the front passenger seat, “what’s new?”

  The heartless humor of the question prompted Rose to burst into tears. “He’s in terrible shape,” she now admitted as she pulled the car out into Massachusetts Avenue for the quick drive to the White House. “And I’ve been a basket case since Tuesday, ever since he picked me to tell Pat that he’d decided to quit.” The tape they were now calling the “smoking gun”—Don’t go any further into this case—period!—had come out the day before, and the skies had begun raining fire and ash.

  “Was she for it or against?” asked Alice. “His quitting.”

  “Dead set against. Julie, too. They’d known about that tape since last Friday. The president sent up copies of the transcript to Pat and the girls and Bebe, to prepare them.” She made it sound like an act of uncommon tenderness, but Alice snorted: “A little late to be letting them in on it, don’t you think?”

  Rose, who could still be angered by any hint of defection, pointed out that Jim St. Clair, the president’s own lawyer, hadn’t learned about the tape until last week. “And once he found out,” she explained, contemptuously, “he got worried that he would be accused of obstructing justice unless he reported the contents to the special prosecutor. He could barely wait for a transcr
ipt.”

  Within a few minutes the car was nearing the White House. The crowd singing “Jail to the Chief” was smaller than an hour before, though even at its jeering height it had been somehow easier to take than the quiet along the Potomac three nights ago, when Rose and the rest of the presidential party aboard the Sequoia had sailed past silent clusters of spectators on the banks, all of them keeping a solemn death watch in the summertime twilight.

  She held up her pass to the policeman on duty and drove to her parking spot on West Executive Drive.

  Alice pointed out the exceptionally bright lights that appeared to be on in the East Room. Several of the people who’d attended her wedding there had filed past Lincoln’s body in the same space forty years before that, but none of this was on her mind now; her attention and will were fully focused on the present moment.

  “They’re setting up television equipment in there,” Rose explained. “He wants his farewell to the staff to be broadcast live.”

  She helped Mrs. L out of the car and onto the walkway leading to the West Wing. Only now, on the floodlit grounds, did Alice notice, and remark upon, Rose’s pink dress and pink shoes.

  “I was determined not to look as if I were at a funeral today,” Rose said, stiffly.

  “I always dress for one,” Alice replied.

  Rose took her past the Cabinet Room, where the boss had earlier tonight said goodbye to more than forty men, mostly longtime supporters from the Hill, many of whom had been in tears. Once the two women went inside her office, Rose saw Alice crinkle her nose: she was smelling smoke and assuming, correctly, that some papers had recently been burned in the room’s fireplace. “Good for you,” said Mrs. Longworth, who then admired a long feather boa hanging on an old clothes tree. Rose explained that she’d gotten it at a tango party at the Argentine embassy; Bob Gray had been her escort. “Take it,” she said to the old lady, who did.