Thomas Mallon - Finale - A Novel of the Reagan Years

She reached for the Post , under which she’d been hiding a Dominick Dunne novel. There was Sakharov on the front page, blinking his way back into the light beside his physically wrecked wife. Terrible as what they’d endured might be, the story could not hold her. Perhaps Ave, with his long Soviet experience, might have had something interesting to say about this release, though he had never really adapted to the present day’s premium on the crisp sound bite.

What should the Democrats be saying about this turn of events? Taking credit for it, perhaps? Hadn’t the party’s small Scoop Jackson wing been the political faction to make human-rights violations a real issue? Yes, she thought, but all that involved Moynihan, so there would be no pleasure in pointing it out. Maybe one of her new senators could make a remark about how the U.S.S.R. was opening up while Ronald Reagan would be filling American jails with low-level drug offenders? No, that didn’t quite track. This really was one of those times she needed Arthur to tell her what her position was.

The butler now brought a white phone to the terrace, and David’s wife looked as if she might be hoping it was for her — a distraction from the routine that she seemed to find boring after only twenty-four hours. But it was Kitty.

“Too early to wish you a Happy New Year?” asked the always-buoyant voice from New York.

“Of course not, dear. How are you?”

“Just fine,” said Kitty. “I love Manhattan at Christmastime! I take the subway instead of cabs — so much quicker getting around. People are wonderfully nice when they recognize you.”

“I’ll have to try it.”

“Now, speaking of trying,” said Kitty. “Did you ever read what I left for you at N Street?”

Pamela grimaced. “Oh, you mean the Dr. Aston business.”

“Yes, Pam.” Kitty was a great believer in all forms of uplift, and had been trying to talk her friend into the plastic surgery that Pamela kept hemming and hawing about. She’d gone so far as to get Dr. Aston’s office to prepare a customized, reassuring memorandum about what the operation involved and what splendid benefits would result.

Despite the memo’s soothing tones, Pamela had actually been horrified by its descriptions. Not wanting the young Mortimers to hear any of this, she lowered her voice. “Yes, I read it.”

“And?” asked Kitty.

“It sounds awful!”

“Well, it is , but only for a week or so. And then you’re fifteen years younger and full of punch!”

“Kitty, they cut the muscles under the face.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Shouldn’t a face-lift, of all things, be more…superficial?”

“I see your point, but—”

“I can’t think about it now.”

“Well,” said Kitty, “you’ve taken the first step. You’re a brave girl to read what he sent, and I’ll call you again on New Year’s Day.”

After replacing the receiver, Pamela looked out at a boat idling not far beyond the edge of the dock. A well-built young man was standing on its deck doing things with ropes and sails. Watching him, she formed the sudden, firm conviction that, however green he still might be, Al Gore — not the ever-agonizing Mario Cuomo — was her man for ’88, the one most likely to have her sitting here two Christmases from now with news of her ambassadorial nomination. At that point the N Street house would be filled with briefing books not for “issues evenings” but to bone her up on whatever important country had been laid at her feet. France? Yes. Or perhaps even the Soviet Union? Whichever it was, she should get first pick, well ahead of Bob Strauss.

Bob had called her in London, making sure things were all right between them. He’d also made an argument for why Reagan should not be impeached, whatever the investigations turned up. His ouster would make Bush the incumbent, like LBJ in ’64, he reminded her, and the voters would not want to remove him for a third president in the space of what might, by the time impeachment was done, be less than a year. And that would keep the Democrats out of the White House until ’92. Did she really want to risk having her reward postponed to a point when she would be too old to enjoy it?

Nonetheless, Pamela remained committed to apocalypse. And she wondered now whether that treacherous girl who’d gone to Hill & Knowlton had gotten anywhere with Mr. Hitchens. If she inspired him to land a body blow against Reagan’s congressional cronies, Pamela would take her to Paris, or Moscow, and put her on the embassy payroll.

—

Terry Dolan, who helped provide Ronald Reagan with a Republican Senate when he entered the White House in 1981, died from congestive heart failure today in Washington, D.C. He was thirty-six years old. As chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Dolan marshaled significant financial resources and ideological energy on behalf of Republican candidates during the first half of the decade, until intramural battles with fellow conservatives like Paul Weyrich — and the rise of liberal counterparts like Pamela Harriman’s Democrats for the 80s — diminished NCPAC’s influence…

Anne had a vague notion that she’d heard of Terry Dolan, and yet, her nerves being what they currently were, she wished that the Dallas NPR station, which she’d found the other day on Peter’s expensive radio, would take a break from the news and supply a half-minute of that dulcimer music, or whatever it was, that public radio used for clearing the listener’s mental palate. The “intramural battles” the newscaster had just referenced now seemed as silly to her as the dust-ups between Helen’s lieutenants at WAND.

Politics fulfills man’s essential and permanent function as a social being, as a part of God’s creation.

Anne could still quote this line, which she’d heard Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of labor, speak over the radio from the Democratic convention in 1948. Its gravity and optimism had so impressed her that she copied it onto a card that she taped to the cash register in Leo Abner’s Owosso bookshop. She still wanted to believe the words but suspected she never would again. Peter’s political ambitions, once conventional and lately exotic, had delivered mostly comeuppance and delusion to his life, just as Anders’s own hard-edged idealism now seemed to be bringing him low. Think globally, act locally was one of WAND’s many catchphrases. Well, Anne had more or less decided to leave the globe to others. She’d begun to sense not only her own local futility but also the likelihood that Reagan, and even Gorbachev, for all that they were officially in charge of the globe, might just be making it up as they went along.

A fine hospice nurse, a Mexican woman, was at this moment in the bedroom with Peter. Marita seemed to Anne a softer translation of the starchy, capable Irish housemaids she remembered from growing up in Darien. The woman treated her as if she were Peter’s current wife, not his ex. Out of natural considerateness? Because Ralph and Susan had suggested this was appropriate? Maybe even because Peter himself had shown Anne such deference when she got here more than a week ago, while he was still lucid and even conversational.

Anne had been surprised to see that her status extended to several documents her son had set out for her to read. There were three different powers of attorney, and she was listed on every one of them, the equal of her children — very much by Peter’s wish, Ralph had assured her.

His pain was terrible. Sometimes the medications overrode it and sometimes they didn’t; for the moment everything was quiet.

She had always known, and told him, even before the wedding, that they would never reach their twentieth anniversary together. But he was still too young to be dying; they hadn’t even gotten to what would have been their fortieth, though lots of couples they had known were now routinely passing that mark. Marita and her husband, Anne had learned, were coming up on thirty, though the nurse scarcely looked old enough for it to be possible.