Thomas Mallon: Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

Betsy Bloomingdale, looking on from the edge of the room with Nancy, leaned over and said to the first lady, “Charlie Wick tells me there’s a surprise coming.”

“I hate surprises!” said Nancy, who did. At lunchtime she’d learned from one of her agents about Hinckley’s day out, which had added, however irrationally, to her sense of danger and besiegement.

“But maybe you’ll like this one,” said Betsy, who squeezed her friend’s hand and noted how exhausted she was. “You know, I don’t care how many hours I get with you on the phone. We haven’t sat together since that dinner for the library. How long ago was that? August?”

“Oh, don’t mention the library!” cried Nancy, in a kind of mock-mock-horror — pretending that her real fear was actually fake.

She kissed Bets and began moving dutifully from one cluster of guests to the next, acting as if this were all a respite from the White House rather than an extension of the same ordeal. When Tony Rose, who’d probably seen the Gershwin show, cued the band to play “Love Is Here to Stay,” she and Ronnie got out on the floor and everyone else cleared off to watch.

She felt no hint of relief until twelve o’clock neared and she knew it would soon be over: one could usually hear most of the limo drivers turning over their motors before the band got through “Auld Lang Syne.” As everyone counted off the seconds to midnight, she held her husband’s hand and whispered longingly to Merv, on her other side, “How about you buy this place from Walter and then lease one of the cottages to me and Ronnie?”

“I don’t think I could do a deal that big in only two years,” said Merv, almost seriously.

Well, at least he thought they had that long left in Washington!

We two have paddled in the stream,

From morning sun till dine;

But seas between us broad have roared

Since auld lang syne.

Something was different from other years. Walter was commandeering the bandleader’s microphone.

“If Charlie Wick can put down his clarinet, I’m going to let him offer you tonight’s pièce de résistance .”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Wick, boyishly eager to oblige, “if you’ll all go into the Game Room and take seats, we have a very special audio presentation that will be the perfect way for you to see in — or, I should say, hear in — this New Year of 1987.”

The president shrugged his shoulders in a don’t-ask-me gesture, and the first couple marched off in what became a conga line with everybody else. The backgammon tables had been cleared from the Game Room, where many of the guests had at one time or another watched films, but it felt strange to be assembled like an old-time studio audience at a radio station. On the screen there was only a still picture of Ronald Reagan.

Wick’s voice came through speakers while he remained out of sight in the projection room. “You’ve all seen that familiar wall map near where you’re sitting, the one that Frank Sinatra gave to Walter and Lee. Hey, come to think of it: where are Frank and Barbara tonight?” The guests laughed but wondered where this was going. “That’s the map that moves, the one that shows you which parts of the world are experiencing sunlight and which are in the dark. Well, ladies and gentlemen, right now it is ten fifteen a.m. in Moscow, and this is the Voice of America.”

After dimming the lights, Charlie pressed a button for the live radio feed. In a few seconds they were all hearing Ronald Reagan’s voice, the way a handful of Soviets were now hearing it, too, as it alternated with the voice of a Russian translator.

I had hoped to address you by way of television, and to have General Secretary Gorbachev address the American people on United States television, as was done last year. Unfortunately, your government officials declined our offer to have such an exchange of greetings. I regret that we were not able to take advantage of the opportunity to build mutual trust…So I come to you tonight over the Voice of America. This season, in and around the New Year, is a season of love and hope; a time for reflection; a time of expectation…

Everyone remained quiet, even during the translations. Nancy watched her husband exhibit an abashed contentment. The tape, already created and stored away, was now doing its job.

After our Reykjavik meeting, both sides took time to reflect on what had been accomplished and on ways to move forward again…

Nancy looked at Shultz and then at Dick Nixon, who had taken out a pen and pad in order to make notes.

Whenever there’s a restoration of human rights to a man like Andrei Sakharov, or a woman like Yelena Bonner, as happened recently, it helps strengthen the foundations for trust and cooperation between our countries…

Exile — prison! It was her greatest fear, and not unthinkable. She remembered Ronnie telling her a dozen years ago that Nixon, facing the possibility of it, was consoling himself with the fact that throughout history some statesmen had done their best writing — manifestos and so forth — from jail. She had put her hands over her ears when he said it.

And now, over the radio, Ronnie was talking about the Russian soul, sounding like a soothing, forgiving god, one who had made an appearance and would soon retreat into the heavens:

So, once again, on behalf of the American people, let me wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. Thank you. God bless you, and good night.

More than a few people, Walter included, were crying. “I can’t think of a more fitting way to welcome in 1987,” he said, as the lights came up and Sinatra’s wall map moved a millimeter further from light to darkness and darkness to light. The band resumed playing in the distance.

The president and Nancy were the first to stand, and Nixon took a good, curious look at them. All the life seemed drained from her face. He watched the president say good night to people he’d known for decades, doing it with the kind of detachment one might bring to a rope line of strangers at an airport campaign stop. His expression was blankly grave when he reached Nixon.

“Dick, I never thanked you for that fax.”

Had he deliberately not done that in their phone calls since Reykjavik? Had he simply forgotten until this moment?

“Well, I’m always happy to help. And my advice is usually worth just about what it costs.”

“Happy New Year, Dick.”

Had the fax convinced him? Confirmed his own thinking? Bought him a little cover in disagreements with Shultz and Nitze? Did Reagan even remember?

Along with Nancy, he was gone.

—

The William French Smiths were staying in the Pink Suite, on one side of the Game Room, while she and Ronnie, as always, had the Yellow, with its blond-wood furniture, golden quilt, and jar of pale-yellow jellybeans.

Ronnie took off his black tie and then removed her earrings, an old jokey ritual they had, as if the task demanded more mechanical aptitude than she possessed.

“Happy New Year,” he said with a kiss. “And I’m sorry about before.”

He was referring to an argument they’d had in this room right after lunch. She’d been on him about Don Regan— I was right about Al Haig, right about Stockman and Jim Watt; why shouldn’t I be right about Don? — and he’d said, “Honey, please get off my back.” He’d uttered the words in what anyone but the two of them would have regarded as the sweetest way imaginable, on the order of a plea to be allowed another half hour of golf. Even so, she’d heard that phrase only twice in the past thirty-five years — when she wanted him to break up Ron’s affair with an older woman, and tried to speed up his decision on whether to run in ’76. She was still spinning from hearing it today. Those words were one of the main reasons she’d hated tonight, been irritated by everyone here from Lee to Jerry.