Joan Didion - The Last Thing He Wanted

I had thought to learn Treat Morrison’s version of why she did it from the transcript of his taped statement. I had imagined that she would have told him what she would not or did not tell either the FBI or the DIA agents who spoke to her. I had imagined that Treat Morrison would have in due time set down his conclusions about whatever it was she told him.

No hint of that in those four hundred and seventy-six pages.

Instead I learned that what he referred to as “a certain incident that occurred in 1984 in connection with one of our Caribbean embassies” should not, in his opinion, have occurred.

Should not have occurred and could not have been predicted.

By what he called “any quantitative measurement.”

However, he added. One caveat. In situ this certain incident could have been predicted.

Which went to the question, he said, of whether policy should be based on what was said or believed or wished for by people sitting in climate-controlled rooms in Washington or New York or whether policy should be based on what was seen and reported by the people who were actually on the ground. He was constrained by classification from discussing the details of this incident and mentioned it only, he said, as a relevant illustration of the desirability of listening to the people who were actually on the ground.

No comment, as the people who were actually on the ground were trained to say if asked what they were doing or where they were staying or if they wanted a drink or even what time it was.

No comment.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

Elena McMahon had not been trained to say this, but was on the ground nonetheless.

I recently sat at dinner in Washington next to a reporter who covered the ground in question during the period in question. After a few glasses of wine he turned to me, lowered his voice, and said about this experience that nothing that had happened to him since, including the birth of his children and assignment to several more overt wars in several more overt parts of the world, had made him feel so alive as waking up on that particular ground any day in that particular period.

Until Elena McMahon woke up on that particular ground, she did not count her life as one in which anything had happened.

No comment. Thank you. Goodbye.

The first time she met Barry Sedlow was the day her father left the hospital. You’ll be pleased to know you’ll be leaving here tomorrow, the resident had said to her father, and she had followed him out to the nurses’ station. “He’s not ready to go home,” she had said to the resident’s back.

“Not to go home, no.” The resident had not looked up from the chart he was studying. “Which is why you should be making whatever arrangements you prefer with the discharge coordinator.”

“But you just agreed with me. He’s not ready to be discharged. The arrangement I prefer is that he stay in the hospital.”

“He can’t stay in the hospital,” the resident said, implacable. “So he will be discharged. And he’s not going to be able to take care of himself.”

“Exactly. That was my point.” She tried for a reasonable tone. “As you say, he’s not going to be able to take care of himself. Which is why I think he should stay in the hospital.”

“You have the option of making an acceptable arrangement for home care with the discharge coordinator.”

“Acceptable to who?”

“To the discharge coordinator.”

“So it’s up to the discharge coordinator whether or not he stays here?”

“No, it’s up to Dr. Mertz.”

“I’ve never met Dr. Mertz.”

“Dr. Mertz is the admitting physician of record. On my recommendation, Dr. Mertz has authorized discharge.”

“Then I should talk to Dr. Mertz?”

“Dr. Mertz is not on call this week.”

She had tried another tack. “Look. If this has something to do with insurance, I signed papers saying I would be responsible. I’ll pay for whatever his insurance won’t cover.”

“You will, yes. But he still won’t stay here.”

“Why won’t he?”

“Because unless you’ve made an acceptable alternate arrangement,” the resident said, unscrewing the top from his fountain pen and wiping the nib with a tissue, “he’ll be discharged in the morning to a convalescent facility.”

“You can’t do that. I won’t take him there.”

“You won’t have to. The facility sends its van.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant you can’t just send someone to a nursing home.”

“Yes. We can. We do it all the time. Unless of course the family has made an acceptable alternate arrangement with the discharge coordinator.”

There had been a silence. “How do I reach the discharge coordinator,” she said then.

“I could ask her to come by the patient’s room,” The resident had refitted the top of his pen and placed it in the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He seemed not to know what to do with the tissue. “When she has a moment.”

“Somebody took my goddamn shoes,” her father had said when she walked back into the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed buckling his belt and trying to free his arm from the hospital gown. “I can’t get out of here without my goddamn shoes.” She had no way of knowing whether he intended to walk out or had merely misunderstood the resident, but she had found his shoes and his shirt and arranged his jacket over his thin shoulders, then walked him out past the nurses’ station into the elevator.

“You’ll need a nurse,” she had said tentatively when the elevator doors closed.

Her father had nodded, apparently resigned to strategic compromise.

“I’ll tell the agency we need someone right away,” she had said, trying to consolidate her gain. “Today.”

Once more her father had nodded.

Lulled by the ease of the end run around the hospital apparat, Elena was still basking in this new tractability when, a few hours later, securely back at the house in Sweetwater, the nurse installed in front of the television set and the bed freshly made and a glass of bourbon-spiked Ensure at the ready (another strategic compromise, this one with the nurse), Dick McMahon announced that he needed his car keys and he needed them now.

“I told you,” he said when she asked why. “I’ve got somebody to see. Somebody’s waiting for me.”

“I told you,” he said when she asked who. “I told you the whole deal.”

“You have to listen to me,” she had said finally. “You’re not in any condition to do anything. You’re weak. You’re still not thinking clearly. You’ll make a mistake. You’ll get hurt.”

Her father had at first said nothing, his pale eyes watery and fixed on hers.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said then. His voice was helpless, bewildered. “Goddamn, what’s going to happen now.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said then, as if defeated, his head falling to one side. “I needed this deal.”

She had taken his hand.

“What’s going to happen now,” he had repeated.

“I’ll take care of it,” she had said.

Which was how Elena McMahon happened, an hour later, to be standing on the dock where the Kitty Rex was berthed. Looks like you’re waiting for somebody, Barry Sedlow said. I think you, Elena McMahon said.

The second time she was to meet Barry Sedlow he had instructed her to be in the lobby of the Omni Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard at what he called thirteen sharp. She was to sit near the entrance to the restaurant as if she were waiting to meet someone for lunch.

There would be lunch traffic in and out of the restaurant, she would not stand out.