Kate Hepburn on friends

"We are required, I think, to be polite and considerate of others: This is a sort of social compact we have with each other--and very few people honor it, I might add. I'll stay out of your way, smiling all the time, and you stay out of mine. If I stumble or my tire goes flat or I appear to be short of funds or food, I'll happily drop by and help out. But, for the most part, you stay over there and I'll stay over here. 

You'll learn as you live a bit longer that there are very few people who are really interested in who you are and what you're doing: That handful who do care and who do want to see you do well are treasures. Hold them very dear and very close to you. Forgive them almost anything. Be there for them. 

But most of life is solitary and hard--you work and you study and you fail and you do the damned things over and over again. And this is your responsibility. Most people, as I've said, are stupid and lazy and really only concerned with getting through the next couple of hours with silliness and stimulation and something to eat. Be polite. Look ahead. Ignore them. Do the work. Move forward." 

--Katharine Hepburn/Interview with James Grissom/1990/Photograph by Norman Parkinson, 1952/

Here's another excerpt from either the same or another interview Grissom did with Hepburn.  Evidently they're included in a book, which I now must find and obtain:

Interview

1990

Turtle Bay

I'm so tired of the term victim. Everybody's a victim. I'm not talking about the tragedies of the world, in which people truly are victimized: I'm talking about everyday activities in which people enjoy crying out about their status as a victim. Everybody has been abused or betrayed or deliberately set out on a course of failure. This is such bullshit, I don't even know what to say. Our failures emanate from within us; my failures are my own damned fault. I can't look at a man or a woman or a studio or the mores of a certain time and say, Well, I was a victim of that person or that time. No, I might have allowed them to lead me to believe that I was unsuitable or unattractive or untalented. And I never let them, so I was never a victim. And this is not because I'm so smart--anyone can adopt this philosophy and do quite well in life. Refuse to be a victim. Learn from the unfortunate incident--failed audition; being fired; losing at love--and do something about it, and then succeed at the next go-round. I can't even turn on the television or look at a newsstand now without seeing the latest victim. I find people horribly boring, I must say. I think they must enjoy their acute ability to enjoy and promote their failure.

Might We Finally Forgive Farce, the Forsaken Genre?

My two published novels and their work-in-progress sequel may feel confident they'll win recognition some day, but this doesn't do their creator much good. By the time their adopted once venerable genre struggles back from exile to its rightful place in the commercial canon he will long have drifted to the predictable unpredictability of mystery and crime fiction. It might even come to pass that by then his name will appear, in the service of accuracy, with the modifier “the late”.

Too late to bask in the glow these three novels could have earned, being in the redeeming vanguard of a genre that's fallen shamefully over the years, devolving from the respectability of Chaucer and Shakespeare into a shabby cudgel of disparagement.

“What a farce!” The disgust curls its lip at the target, which could be anything from a tasteless hamburger to a government to life itself: “There are times,” said Mark Twain, “when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

I suppose the word's loss of dignity, from theatrical form to curse, can be blamed on the lower status of comedy in plays such as “The Canterbury Tales” and “The Comedy of Errors”compared with something more sophisticated, such as satire and parody.

V. S. Pritchett, British writer and critic, put it this way: “The difference between farce and humor in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humor varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.”

Warner Bros. cartoon producer and director Chuck (Charles Martin) Jones made the distinction more charitably and literally. “Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.”

I prefer the Jones definition because of its greater clarity. I wrote the first two novels thinking they were political/social satire. My thinking hasn't changed, yet from a marketing point of view I've come to see the word “satire” as a tad pretentious. And this overthinking has birthed a sniggle of doubt that my work passes muster with the conventional interpretation of just what a bonafide satire must be.

Better to play it safe, then, whether or not this doubt bears merit, and notch down the hype and thus the expectations of potential readers.

Ah, expectations. Therein lies the rub.

So...(Ch 30 draft - President makes his pitch)

Geddes listened without interrupting while Ruth recounted her conversation with the president. He walked alongside her in silence awhile after she'd finished. A sullen bruise had appeared above the treeline in the west, marring the sunny sky with its promise of an inhospitable day's end. Ruth seemed impervious to the sporadic wind gusts, but Geddes zipped up his Iowa Hawkeyes jacket and hunched his shoulders against the chill. No one was near them at the moment, yet Geddes kept his voice cautious when he spoke.

“When are you supposed to get back to him?”

“Tonight.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I'd get back to him. I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice.”

“It's in your voice now, Ruth.”

“That may be because I'm a little afraid of what I'm thinking...”

“You...”

“...that we should do it.”

Geddes stopped walking. He clutched Ruth's elbow and she pivoted to face him. He said nothing, just looked at her, intently.

“You don't, I gather,” she said, eyebrows raised.

“Way too risky. For us, him, for the country, for chrissakes. Best case, the world watches our president come unglued and babble like a toddler. Worst case? Shit, Ruth, I don't even wanna think of a worst case. What if his big secret is he had sex with his mother or he murdered somebody? Jesus, there's no telling what might come out.”

“Al, he's an object of contempt now. How could it get any worse? He told me White House employees he's never seen before bump into him in the hallways – I mean physically bump into him – and scowl at him as if it was his fault. No apology. Nothing. How can a president fall any lower than that?”

“He'll be incapacitated. The world will watch him regress to infancy, babbling and sucking his thumb. He'll be declared incompetent. Do we really want Quentin Kudlow running things even for a day, not to say more likely two or three weeks? And couldn't we be charged with attempted assassination? What if he goes insane? Or dies?”

“He says he'll make a statement on camera. And we're taking you and Liz along. And, I'm finally taking it, too.”

“Ruth!”

“Why not? What better reassurance we're not pulling something? What better gesture of bipartisanship?” She laughed. Geddes shook his head.

The Little Dog from Outer Space

I heard her behind me almost the instant I saw that damned thing on his desk. “Kinda thought maybe I'd find you here,” she said, her voice strong with youthful promise.

“Hi, Sal. Just get up?”

“I smelled the coffee.” Holding a steaming mug, she reached over and set it on the desk next to mine. She inspected my cup. “Can I warm this up?”

I looked at her, shook my head and tried to smile. She smiled back, beaming a radiance that pushed away the chill.

She slipped an arm around my shoulders, and kissed my cheek. Her scent was warm and innocent. “Dad,” she said, “you think they'll find him?”

“It's been three days, Sally. If he was in the tower, I don't think so.”

She squeezed my shoulder. “Uncle Mark call?”

“He's probly still on alert. He'd be here if he could.” I said this without conviction, knowing my brother's indifference to the family. It was he whom I'd always suspected of stealing the dog. He'd been jealous when Dad gave it to me, had even taken it a couple of times when we still lived at home. Clyde, the oldest, had taken it back the second time, warning Mark with a cuff on the head not to do it again. I hid the dog when Clyde went off to college.

Wasn't much to look at. Size of a walnut, but heavy, a dull bronze color. A man Dad knew, a farmer, hit something with his plow. Scientists at the university said it was a meteorite. They broke off a chunk to study and gave him the rest. He had it made into these little dogs. I was about 10, and I found it magical. Treasured it for years. At some point it disappeared.

And here it was on Clyde's desk.

The little pooch couldn't have picked a worse time to show up. If emotions played football I was the skinny third-string halfback caught in the bone-crunching clash of behemoth linemen. Love for an idolized brother, stunned at the cusp of certain grief and now hammered by treachery. The word why ballooned to fill my consciousness.

“Oh, there's your little dog,” Sally said, her voice trying gamely to cheer. She reached across me and picked it up, brought it close to her face. “Hi, little guy,” she cooed.

All these years, I was thinking.

“Oh, Dad, I'm so glad Uncle Clyde kept him.”

“Yes,” I said. “me, too.” My voice sounded odd.

My only child held the little metal pup a long while. “You know, Dad,” she patted my shoulder again, “I've always felt kinda bad about that.”

“Bad? About what, Sally?”

“After we lost our house and Uncle Clyde was helping us move. He was always so nice...”

“What do you mean, Sally?”

“Well, I gave him the little dog. He saw it in a box and picked it up. He seemed so pleased to see it. I told him to keep it, as a present. He said it was yours. And that's when I told a lie. A little one, I thought...”

She looked away, face turning red. “I said it was mine, that you gave it to me.”

In a blink a seam appeared in the crush of football linemen, and I dashed through into an open field. I climbed slowly out of Clyde's squeaky chair, turned and wrapped her greedily in my arms.

So... (Ch. 29 *1st draft* - Pres. Morowitz tackles the terrorists)

Ruth Rose clamped her tongue in her teeth, biting until she felt pain and until the pain squelched the hysteria giggling up from her gut at the spectacle of President Geoffrey Abercrombie Morowitz seated across from her on Marine One, the H-42 Chinook helicopter bound for Camp David.

Legs more dominant than they had any business being, knees bulging through faded jeans so near she heard the denim stretching, shins and thighs so long they formed something geometric-looking that made her think of an overturned oil derrick, at the peak of which perched this narrow, forlorn face, distant and tiny in perspective and framed between an unkempt thatch of mouse-gray hair and a crumpled, foreshortened robin's-egg-blue polo shirt. Only when they moved, when the president spoke, did Ruth notice the thin, bone-white arms waving like the antennae of an albino grasshopper. No wonder the cartoonists had such fun with this physically unfortunate politician, portraying him the more grotesque in caricature as his popularity plummeted with the populace. It was almost a blessing, she mused, that in his case the shrinking in size of his editorial depictions diminished somewhat the graphic affront of their visual pilloryings.

“We're off!” Morowitz announced over the revving whine of Marine One's twin General Electric engines and its rotors' accelerating whupwhupwhup as they lifted the twelve-ton machine from the American Enterprises helipad. The president, his face wearing an expression that mitigated its perpetual near-grimace with a half-smile, rotated his head slightly to acknowledge the three other passengers, across the aisle. Rose watched the others as they met his gaze. It occurred to her that despite his uncomfortably odd physical appearance Morowitz enjoyed a certain magnetism, which the camera lens never seemed to catch but which came through in person. A natural grace to his movements, she guessed, all the more noticeable for its incongruence with his body's architecture. The voice helped too, she knew. Resonating urbane masculine confidence, it served him well in every forum.

He said something now that completely undid that vocal persona, although coming after what had transpired the past two days the reversal was no surprise to his guests.

“I feel strange now, you know?” He was looking at Ruth when he said this, but he let his eyes drift past her toward the narrow cockpit door when he continued, in a tone less distinct, as if thinking aloud. “I mean, I can't go back now, can I. Not really.”

Ruth waited for anything else he might say. Instead, he sighed deeply and turned to the window next to his seat, brushing back the blue curtain and peering into the cotton clouds. Al Geddes did a half-shrug when Ruth caught his eye. He'd played devil's advocate all along, from the moment she told him what Morowitz wanted.

Grace

The instant you remember

gratitude

with enough focus to awaken its power

to embrace you

and all around you

with arms so warm,

so forgiving,

the muscles in your neck and shoulders

unwind in celebration.

So... (excerpt - Ch 28)

It was Roger Chapman, in the process of shutting down the equipment, whose peripheral vision snagged his attention enough to turn his head enough to notice the president.

“Sir! Er...Mr. President!” Chapman blurted, bringing Gladstone and Trueblood craning around in their chairs. Trueblood's lips formed the words “Mr. President”, while Gladstone merely stared, mouth hanging open.

President Geoffrey Morewitz was leaning against the wall just inside and beside the office door, arms folded across his narrow chest. His long yet oddly youthful face quickly mustered a dutiful smile, which nonetheless fell short of neutralizing the overall sense of haunted anxiety that seemed embedded in the musculature and nerve responses around his oversized eyes. Standing, even leaning, he looked taller than in photos where he was seated. This, because of the disproportionate lengths of his legs and abdomen, which caused unfriendly cartoonists to portray him as a daddy longlegs arachnid.

Both Chapman and Trueblood were stepping away from their chairs, gesturing for the president to sit, when Morewitz's sonorous, authoritative baritone voice froze all movement in the room.

“Evening, fellas...or is it morning, heh heh? Guess I've lost track of the time.” Morewitz made no effort to move to either of the proffered chairs.

“Good morning, Mr. President.” It was Trueblood whose presence of mind kicked in first. “Working late, sir?”

“Yup, I was that. Seems like this job never ends. Anyway, I laid down on the couch for a little nap and then I heard you boys down here. Thought maybe you had a little poker game going...”

“Our apologies, sir, we were unaware...”

“That's OK, Mr...oh, yes, you're Mr. Trueblood. I've heard good things about you...

“So, no poker game, it would appear, which must mean the rumors I caught wind of that something would be happening down in Virginia, at that cottage place, must have been true?”

“Rumors...sir?” The squawk was Gladstone's.

“That's right, Bart. I tried to check around, see if there was any connection to this administration...

“You know, despite all the chatter in the media about this, that and the other, the FDA thus far has made no decision regarding this so-called Vulcana formula. Legally we have no right to take any action whatsoever against Wilde Labs. Yet.” He stared at the still-seated Gladstone, who finally struggled out of his chair and faced his boss.

“Sir,” he said, breathing heavily, “I can assure you we had nothing to do with this. We heard the rumor, too. Probly the same one, Mr. President.”

“Well, I appreciate that,” Bart. “Not that I think you would have done such a...thing without running it up the flagpole first. Do we have any idea who it is?”

“WACKO, I had to guess.”

“Yup, that'd be mine, too. You know, sometimes I wonder why we even have this government. Like we're just window dressing or something. Do we know how it came out?”

“No idea, sir,” Gladstone said, shrugging, after shooting a quick glance at Trueblood and catching his eye. “Our...I mean the attackers appeared to have shot down one of their drones, but it was almost impossible to see what was going on there.” Morewitz nodded slowly, his eyes moving from Gladstone to Trueblood and then to Chapman, who stood behind his chair as if trapped.

“All right then, gentlemen,” sounding conclusive and weary, “I think I'll go back to that couch. Catch a few more zzzs. Good work here.”

Afraid to speak after the president left, Gladstone waited until he and Trueblood were in Gladstone's office. There, Gladstone scribbled the words window dressing on a sheet of paper and handed it to Trueblood. Remembering Gladstone used the same expression in Secord's office before the battle started, Trueblood nodded and mouthed the word “bug” and pointed at the light fixture over Gladstone's desk. Gladstone nodded.

“Wanna go grab a little breakfast?” he said.

“The cafeteria open this early?”

“I doubt it, but I'm hungry for some of Ma Brumfield's flapjacks. We can walk from here. Fresh air'll wake us up.” He winked.

So... (excerpt - Ch-27)

Randy Newgate learned shortly before 3 a.m. the attack on The Cottage was underway. He alerted Anthony Cromwell at The Cottage, Sean Seawell at Chesapeake and then beeped Geddes, slipped into some jeans and a mud-brown flannel shirt and hurried through the building to Geddes's apartment.

“Anonymous,” he told his boss, “Just now. Cottage.”

“Come in, Randy. Sit down. What the fuck's going on?” Geddes threw the covers off and sat up on the edge of the bed, groping for the switch on the nightstand lamp.

“No time, Al. They're attacking. We need to get down to my office. We can talk on the way.” Newgate reached out a hand to help his boss stand, but Geddes ignored it, pushing himself up and off the mattress on his own.

The two Olympic-walked down the corridor. Geddes's white terrycloth bathrobe flapping around the brisk long strides suggested a surgeon hurrying to an operating room, with only the slap of flip flops on the linoleum dispelling the illusion.

“Awright, who the fuck's attacking, and where?” he growled.

“Mexican drug cartel. Not sure which family. Feds hired them, no doubt. Plausible denial bullshit.” The forced march bounced Newgate's voice up and down like a boy's in puberty. Thus the “bull” came out basso and the “shit” tenor. Geddes turned his head to look at Newgate, but neither man laughed.

Em arrived at Newgate's office-cum-war-room before Newgate had finished tuning the monitors to connect them with satellite feeds providing live aerial views of the combat zone. By the time the screens revealed anything useful, Geddes had the coffee machine steaming and a row of cups lined up next to it.

“What do we have there? Drones? Robots? I don't see anything. Nothing's moving,” said Geddes, turning to the others after scanning the four flat screens and squinting closely at the flickering green images that transmitted infrared interpretations of heat-emitting objects.

“Hummingbirds,” said Em, barely audibly, as she rubbed sleep from her eyes with the back of a hand under hair still wild from the pillow.

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Bad guys?”

Newgate took over: “Our source says about two dozen for sure. There could be twice that many, and we don't know what kind of equipment they have.”

“And all we have are three hummingbirds? That's some kinda drone, right? Helicopters?”

“Helicopters wouldn't last ten minutes up there," said Em. "These guys are sure to have missiles. They know what they're up against.”

“So?”

“So these are hummingbirds. Mechanical ones. Same size. Look the same. Can't tell 'em from the real ones right in front of you. They're rigged just like the bigger drones, only everything's miniaturized. Same surveillance capability and a tiny computer heart that reads, interprets and executes according to how it's been programmed.

“We can call audibles from the ground, and can monitor them constantly, what they see and how they respond. But these little birdies do surprisingly well on their own.”

“The laser gun?”

“Again, same as the big birds, but proportionately sized. Same power, though, same capacity. I've put the new stun option in them, too. They'll be on stun until, or unless we need something more dramatic.”

Geddes was nodding his understanding as Em spoke. He waited for her to finish before offering a critical question: “You said we have only three?”

“Should be enough,” she said. She turned her head, nodded several times at the ghostly faces in the room's reflected green lighting, and turned back to the monitors. Although nothing appeared to be happening on the screens, Em's attention to them had become so intensely focused it created a psychic magnetic field, drawing the others in the room to try to see what she seemed to see.

A blip of lighter green appeared from the upper left corner of one of the screens and began a slow crawl across the top.

“What's that?” Newgate asked abruptly, breaking the trance despite his muted tone.

When no one else spoke, he started again, a little louder, ”That can't be a hummingbird...”

Em spoke without turning from the screens. “Decoy,” she tried to say, but managed only a whispery rasp. She tried again, this time putting out sounds that more resembled hoarse squeaks: “We have decoy drones to draw their fire. Help us locate their weapons.”

“Are they armed?” Geddes asked.

“They're not really drones, Al. That would cost too much. These are more like aluminum box kites. They're 'armed' with standard lasers, which are almost impossible to distinguish from the weapon-grade kind, until you see nothing happens when they touch something. Oh, they'll blind you if they zap your eyes, just like any laser will. So there's that.

“Also, these birds carry tanks of hydrogen gas, so when they're hit they put on quite a show.”

“I trust they'll be far enough from The Cottage when that happens, so no one on the ground's in danger,” Geddes said.

“That's the plan.”

“Do we have any kind of backup plan?”

“Sean has the troops in reserve, with the heavy armor. No stun feature in those yet. If he has to move in with them it'll be just like last time.” She said this last in a diminished voice that sounded almost timid.

Newgate: “So when does the show start, Em?”

Her eyes still locked on the monitors, she said, “The show, as you put it, started about five minutes ago.”

“What?” The exclamation erupted simultaneously from Geddes and Newgate. As one, they leaned toward the screens, faces tightening with the same intensity as hers.

One book to read before it's too late

Hell, you can tell just by its title it's too smartass for American high school literature classes. Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. Published only three years ago it's way too soon for Super Sad to be deemed a classic, which would give it a fighting chance against enraged assaults by lawyer-bearing, church-driven parents determined to shield their little disciples from the kinds of books that might inspire *gasp* skepticism and critical thinking.

Problem is, by the time Super Sad is old enough to be the kind of classic where its title and author's first name can be dropped, with Shteyngart sitting up there next to Orwell and Huxley as iconic legends of social prophesy, it might be too late. At least one of Super Sad's predictions, that books will become dangerously unfashionable, has already almost come to pass.

Here's Terrence Rafferty's review, which ran in Slate shortly after the book came out. If you haven't read Super Sad yet, you best do so before book-reading is seen as socially inept. If you've already read it, there might still be time to read it again. It's one of the funniest, gloomiest social satires I have encountered. 

His Super Sad True Love Story truly is sad.

By Terrence Rafferty|Posted Monday, Aug. 2, 2010, at 10:21 AM

Gary Shteyngart might be too funny for his own good. His new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is a spectacularly clever near-future dystopian satire, but it may actually disappoint admirers of his first two, more consistently hilarious, novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan. At first, the book seems like Shteyngart business-as-usual as we delve into the diary of one Lenny Abramov, a pure exemplar of this writer's favorite species of comic protagonist: a self-deprecating Russian-American Jewish male, self-conscious about his appearance, uselessly well-educated, wry, passionate, neither old nor young, and helplessly prone to error.

Read the rest here: Super Sad True Love Story 

 

So...(excerpt)

Ruth slid her ID badge twice past the scanner on the door to the pool room. When the lock failed to click open, she turned to Joan, “Try yours.”

“The green light came on. Maybe it's the lock.” Joan nonetheless slid her badge, too. Same result. She tugged on the handle, rapped on the small, one-way window. A heavy metallic click interrupted her rapping and the steel door eased open to reveal the pate-shaved, acne-scarred head of a young man.

“Hello, Miz President, Joan,” he rasped, “Sorry, I was on the other end of the pool.”

Both women jerked their heads back reflexively and turned their faces. “Don't give us your cold, Rodney!” Ruth said.

Rodney's face morphed quickly through degrees of surprise, welcoming delight and serious concern, settling finally on an amused smile. “No cold, ma'am. Just a little hoarse from calling time for Mr. Hendrian. He wears those earplugs you know.”

Ruth laughed. “Calling time? What's that for, Warren training for the Olympics?”

“No, ma'am. Mr. Hendran says he's just trying to get in shape. Er...is he expecting you?”

“Oh, yes. Maybe not right here, in the pool, but he's definitely expecting us.”

“OK, then, I'll tell him you're here.”

“No, that's OK, Rodney. We'll just surprise him. If you can excuse us?”

“Yes, ma'am, of course.” He pushed the door all the way open and held it until the two women had entered. Before exiting, he turned toward the pool and shouted, “SEVENTEEN SIX! SEVENTEEN SIX! GOOD TIME!”

The plump body methodically splashing toward the opposite end of the pool, wagging head covered with a rubber skullcap, didn't register any response to the shouted words as they reverberated among the tiled walls and walkways. Before Hendrian reached the end of his lane, Ruth had stripped down to her panties and bra and slipped into the pool, and when he turned to start back she was swimming underwater straight toward him. They met when Hendrian had gotten about halfway back. With about ten feet between them, Ruth burst out of the water.

“Hi, Warren!”

“AGHH...AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEE...blublublublublubl ...” Hendrian went spastic, whitecapping the water as he rolled and upended, backwards with his head and chest underwater, legs and arms thrashing frantically. After a couple of seconds watching Hendrian struggle with no indication he was gaining control Ruth closed the gap, swam under his back and pushed him upright until he was standing on the pool floor, the water up to his armpits. She propped him up there while he continued to flail and splash. He shook his head like a spaniel after a bath, gagging, spitting and gasping for air.

Balls

Confederate John Singleton Mosby and two other scouts, riding behind Union lines along Virginia's Pamunkey River in the area of Hanover and King William counties, came upon a Union supply wagon, which they promptly captured.  Mosby left one man to guard the wagon and its team, and rode on with the other.  Further upriver, after discovering two Union supply schooners at dock, he sent the other scout back to inform Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, and rode on alone.

Mosby soon came upon a company of Pennsylvania cavalry, mounted and drawn up in a line across the road. 

Evening was drawing nigh and Mosby's horse had tired from the daylong ride.  He knew if he turned to flee, the Union riders could overtake him with their fresh mounts.  He pulled up at the crest of a hill, made a show of drawing his saber and turned in the saddle, waving it in the air as if beckoning followers.  "Come on, boys!" he shouted, "Come on!"

The Pennsylvania troopers executed a smart wheel-around and vanished in a cloud of dust down the road. 

From the book If the Woodsman is Late 

When the buck stops

I saw surprise distort Albert's face when he appeared in the doorway that separated his office from what he called “the big office”. He was holding the morning mail pouch, which he ordinarily carries to my working office across the oval room where I sit now.

“Good morning Albert,” I said. My voice came out unusually light, almost cheerful. I found myself giving him the smile I usually save for the public.

“Good morning, ma'am,” he said, after quickly composing himself. He added, “You're here early.”

I held the smile and nodded. “I am. This is an important day and I just felt like getting a head start.”

“Yes, ma'am, I left a note on your...other desk that the ambassador has taken ill and won't be in this morning as scheduled.”

“Oh? Well, that's just as well. Gives me more time to prepare.” He set the mail pouch on the corner of the Truman Desk, bowed slightly and hesitated. I knew he was concerned about my haggard appearance, but I had no desire to tell him what was wrong and he knew better than to ask. “Thanks, Albert,” I said, and he bowed again and returned to his office.

The stress I've been feeling the previous couple of weeks has been unprecedented, ever since the second call came in. This call had no video, but I dreaded it as I had dreaded nothing else. The call came after breakfast as I walked from our living quarters down to the West Wing. I recognized the unique ring tone that had heralded the first call, the trumpet flourishes that introduce Hail to the Chief.

The first call had come on Inauguration Day as my husband and I were getting ready for bed. There was a short video and the text message: “Congratulations! We'll be in touch.”

Bill was in the bathroom. The video ended before he came out. I didn't tell him, partly because I didn't wish to spoil the moment and also because I was unable to save the images. There was no evidence of what I had just seen.

The video was old. Its colors were faded and marked by scratches and the other signs of deterioration incurred by film over time. What the video depicted was a familiar scene, one I had seen many times over the years, filmed by a man named Abraham Zapruder. The only difference was this film had been shot from a higher elevation and at a considerable distance from where Zapruder was standing. This was looking down from what we know as The Grassy Knoll.

I decided not to tell anyone about the call, sensing intuitively it was not a prank, that the video was real and represented a conspiracy so enduring and complex I knew I couldn't trust anybody with what I'd seen. I served the next two years with a darkness on my heart. I avoided the Oval Office except when absolutely necessary, feeling its mockery of the neutered office it represented. Finally two years later came the moment of truth.

In an Oval Office ceremony later today I am to sign the most controversial piece of legislation of my presidency thus far. It's the health care reform bill we should have gotten in 2010. It passed Congress by the slimmest of margins. It could not withstand a veto. The second phone call informed me a veto was expected. My constituents will disown me if I do so. I would sooner die.

Nov. 22, 1963

 

The day Gert had my back

My dad began morphing into Kasper Guttman at the Selective Service office in Portage, Wis.   We'd driven there to appeal a notice I received lifting my student draft deferment after I flunked out of college for the third time.  The notice said I'd be re-classified 1-A unless I could persuade the local draft board otherwise.

It was spring 1963. U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was growing. Our role was still classified as advisory, but more and more American troops and war materials were showing up in that distant land every day. I was more annoyed than worried.  I didn't especially want to be a soldier, but the prospect of adventure had a vague attraction.  My dad was dead set against my being drafted.

We'd talked a little about my strategy on the hour-long drive from Columbus. Were I enrolled in a community college I might get to keep my deferment. Trouble was, I was tired of school.  I had lousy study habits.  I had graduated with honors from high school, but it was a small school and the coursework wasn't rigorous. I hadn't developed enough self-discipline to cope with the independence, academic demands and social distractions of a major university. Maybe I could handle a smaller college, something more like my high school.

“Are you enrolled?” The woman behind the desk was the only person in the small office. Her hair was gray, but she was no sweet, cheek-pinching grandma. No smile, no friendly greeting, flat voice. All business, this bureaucrat.

“Umm...”

My dad took over. “Not yet,” he said, “But he intends to apply as soon as possible.” There was some question as to whether my academic status might prevent me from enrolling in any college. We hadn't looked into that yet.

The woman's eyes never left mine. She asked another question or two, and each time my dad responded before I could say a word. Finally, she turned from me and addressed my dad. “Who is the applicant here, you or him?” She motioned with her head back at me, her voice arched with sarcasm.

Our little session was over.  My dad abruptly stood. “Thank you,” he snapped, then, to me, “Let's go.” We did.

Just outside the office, loudly enough so the woman could hear him through the glass door, my dad told me not to worry, that he had some kind of legal leverage over one of the draft board members. A slap in the face couldn't have hurt me more than those words. I was stunned, but not so much that I couldn't feel the unfamiliar emotion that was born at that moment somewhere inside my heart. It started as a spark of disbelief and quickly burst into disillusionment. Despite the frailties I had come to see in my dad – and there was a fair bill of particulars, considering his lawyerly self-loathing arrogance – my sense of his personal honor had never been in doubt. Seeing him now in a Sydney Greenstreet role, the kind of wheeling dealing villain who did what he had to do to get what he wanted no matter how foul or who might get hurt, The Maltese Falcon's Kasper Guttman, was my first unsentimental glimpse of the man I had once wanted to be.

We drove home in silence. Next day I told my mother I was going to enlist in the Army. That evening, my dad tried to talk me out of it, hurling the usual clichés about throwing my life away and how dare I do this to them. I didn't budge. Then he played his trump card.

“You realize you're killing your mother with this, don't you? Your mother is dying a little every minute because of this.” 

My anger was more controlled than I believe it had ever been. It was hard and cold and determined. I looked at my mother, who sat in a separate chair next to his.

“Are you, Gert? Are you dying a little every minute because I've decided to join the Army?” Our eyes locked. Ordinarily she'd have glanced at her husband before answering a question so clearly defiant of his authority. Instead she smiled, shook her head slightly and murmured, “No.”

From the book If the Woodsman is Late

Lloyd & Gert, R.I.P.