Thomas Mallon: Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

Kansas City was Truman’s town, of course: the bar at the Hotel Muehlebach, where Anne and Jane had last night sipped white wine until one a.m., even called itself The Haberdashery. No wonder Anne was having trouble getting her mind off Peter and ’48. Now a sudden last great roar for Reagan was making her remember a Saturday night from that faraway fall: seven thousand Owossoans turning out to greet their sure-thing favorite son, who came riding down Main Street in a green convertible behind seven brass bands. Traveling in Dewey’s wake had been Jerry and Betty Ford, interrupting their honeymoon with a night of campaigning for his first term in Congress.

A couple of weeks later the whole town had awakened with egg on its face. And Anne, a lonely Truman supporter, had ended up picking Peter, with whom she was forever sparring, over Jack, with whom she was forever necking. It was so long ago: one of the boys had given the other a black eye during that last tumultuous week before the election, but she could no longer remember who’d thrown the punch and who’d gotten hit.

Dole at last came out, waving his good arm. The moment had everybody up on their feet, even the Reagan people. Through the binoculars Anne could see that the vice-presidential candidate was even more damaged than today’s newspaper profiles let on. He seemed hollowed out on one whole side. He was handsome in a Humphrey Bogart sort of way, but — she could tell from those newspaper pieces — too quippy and clever by half, a version of Peter without the Yale varnish. Dole wouldn’t do anything to heal the still-open wounds everywhere in this arena. The vote was 1,187 to 1,070! The first real thriller of a convention since 1952, the year that Mrs. Peter Cox, wife of the state senator, had taken the marital route of least resistance and become a registered Republican.

Throwing in with the GOP had been the only way to accomplish anything worthwhile in Owosso, where Republicans ran everything from the League of Women Voters to the Board of Education. As it was, she hadn’t had to compromise herself much. She’d marched for open housing and fluoridation, and there’d been no shame in ringing doorbells for George Romney, who was more liberal than many Democrats, and honest to boot.

“How does he believe all that nonsense?” she suddenly asked Jane.

“Who? What nonsense?”

“Peter. All that Reagan nonsense. The evils of détente. Cutting taxes to produce more revenue.”

“Relax, Anne. We won . And the two of you are divorced, remember?”

The crowd was at last quieting down to listen to Dole. Anne put the binoculars away, determined not to look at Peter or think of him anymore. She would make herself take pleasure in her accomplishment of getting elected as a delegate. It had required nearly a year of planning and effort but had shortchanged no one. Both her children were now gone from the house — Ralph in law school out in Arizona, and Susan, having dropped out of Carleton, over on the West Coast, living with her boyfriend. Anne knew that those two were at least dabbling in drugs, and she disapproved. But good for Betty Ford for saying that a little experimentation in that realm, as well as with sex, didn’t require someone’s being read out of the human race.

There was nothing wrong, Anne now firmly told herself, with either of her children — or with their mother. She began making a mental list of her own recent initiatives: using her maiden name as a middle one— Anne Macmurray Cox; giving up golf for organic gardening. But she didn’t get far with her self-congratulatory pep talk. Peter, just by being here, and bringing with him all their unhappy history, was spoiling what should have been a grand night.

His own recent history was galling. In ’73 he’d married someone fifteen years younger than herself, a girl who wore a lot of turquoise and ran a “gallery” in Turtle Creek. Anne could imagine the pictures she sold — lots of clowns and big-eyed Walter Keane waifs painted on velvet.

And let us recall that hard-fought battles have never hurt our party. It was just such a contest in 1952 that gave us Dwight David Eisenhower. And President Eisenhower gave us eight years of prosperity, and President Ford will do the same!

And he would , thought Anne, listening to Dole, forcing herself to get caught up, if only for a moment, in the spirit of things. She wished she had one of those plastic horns. Yes, Ford would succeed in the steady old I-like-Ike way. Peter didn’t believe all that Reagan nonsense; she was sure of it. His march to the right derived from his own little local defeat — from having been thrown aside by the party’s Main Street regulars, neighbors who didn’t like him, pure and simple. That was what had turned him into a full-throated Goldwater man, and sent him southward in a fit of pique. He sported his new politics the way he sported the turquoise girl and all the money he’d made in Dallas, as a badge of I-don’t-need-you vulgarity that he could flash at anyone, including his ex-wife.

Dole, having quickly finished, accepted cheers without milking the crowd for more; he was already the good, subordinate running mate, willing to settle for a smaller share of everything. Only seconds after he departed, the spotlights came back on, shining down upon the lectern as if the convention managers feared that any interval in the program might allow the Reaganites to manifest their restlessness. Would Ford be hustled on right now, without any further ado?

Jane realized something else was happening. “Oh, Anne!” she exclaimed, elbowing her friend. “Look!”

It was Cary Grant, even handsomer than he’d been twenty years ago, waving to the crowd, his white hair and thick black-rimmed glasses glinting under the lights. He’d come to the platform to pay tribute to Betty Ford and introduce a little film about the first family, but the crowd — both halves of it — was too excited to let him get started. Anne and Jane smiled at each other; how nice to have a real star, a leading man, on their side; someone ten times bigger than Ronald Reagan, that supporting player who’d had to seek career salvation as a TV host and corporate pitchman.

“ I’m here ,” said Grant, “ because I’ve been permitted the happy privilege of introducing a remarkable woman. ”

It seemed that Mrs. Ford herself would come out before the film started.

“ Women have always been one of my favorite causes, too ,” Grant continued.

BETTY! BETTY! BETTY! roared half the crowd.

Jane turned to Anne to share the moment, the feeling of celebration at last unleashed. But she saw that Anne had collapsed back, helplessly, into all the misery Peter had put her through during their years in Owosso, including all the early local versions of the turquoise girl. Not even the sudden friendly sight of Betty Ford up there on the podium— “Mr. Grant, I accept your nomination! What woman could turn down Cary Grant?”— would let her shake off the heavy, re-imposed weight of the past.

“Buck up,” Jane whispered as the lights went down for the campaign movie. “If things had turned out differently, we’d be watching Bedtime for Bonzo .”

As the Ford film played on — there was Jerry toasting his own English muffins, and letting an ancient Hirohito visit Disneyland — Anne felt the futility of all her recent little attempts at reinvention. She was mired in a past that Peter still governed, and she needed to convince herself that he did not somehow rule the years ahead, that the future did not belong to him and the turquoise girl, any more than it belonged to Ronald Reagan and poisonous, defeated little Nancy, up there in the skybox.