Audition (29 page)

Zelle never took a day off until the summer months. Then she would return to France. I was usually on vacation during that time and could take care of Jackie myself. Zelle would return to us in New York in late summer. Practically every nickel she made went to her family to keep up the ancient château. But the reality was that in short order Zelle became part of our family. Our home was her home in every sense of the word. She was involved with all aspects of Jackie’s life, and when Jackie was grown Zelle more or less became
my
governess.

She was a great character. She was teeny tiny skinny and never seemed to eat. She hoarded every present she ever got, a result, I think, of her wartime experience and having to do without. In all the years she lived with me, she never called me by either my first or last name. If she came into my room, she would say simply, “Knock, knock,” and if she had to take or give a message, she would simply say, “Your friend said,” and so on. After Jackie outgrew needing a governess, Zelle ran the house. She did the marketing, checked all the bills, answered all the phones, ran errands (everyone in the neighborhood knew her), helped out if we entertained. She was a bundle of energy, running, running, running.

Zelle stayed with us for thirty-four years until she became very ill and felt she should return to France for good. She missed us terribly, and I missed her more than I can adequately express. I made sure she had the best medical care, but Zelle died in her family home in 2004. Jackie was, by then, long grown up, but she and I cried together when we got the news about Zelle’s death, and to this day we tell each other Zelle stories.

By the time Jackie was a toddler, I was making pretty good money so I could afford two helpers. Zelle took care of Jackie. Another amazing woman did everything else. Her name is Icodel Tomlinson, and she and I have lived together now for almost thirty-five years.

Icodel came to live with us shortly after she left her native island of Jamaica (she is now an American citizen). During our years together she managed to raise a daughter and three sons. Her son Phillip graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. Her daughter, Yvette, got her master’s degree from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. We all rejoiced at Yvette’s wedding a few years back when she married one of my tape editors, Mark Burns. Icodel’s children are part of my life, too.

Icodel brought into our home her great humor, special wisdom, and the most loving heart, and she became the backbone of our small family. I have never heard her raise her voice or criticize anyone. She did most of the cooking and cared for our home, although she had her own apartment. When Zelle didn’t interfere, she also played for many happy hours with Jackie.

They were an interesting pair, Icodel and Zelle. Icodel, cozy, always good-natured, and Zelle, elegant as only a Frenchwoman can be, cultured, high-strung, often jealous of Icodel’s easygoing ways, but totally loyal and responsible.

What they had in common was that each loved Jackie as if she were her own child. Between the two of them, especially because Zelle was always there, I could travel anywhere in the world and know that Jackie would be all right, no matter what the circumstances. An enormous relief. And, in spite of the fact that each woman blamed the other for any small crisis, we all lived together quite happily for more than thirty years. Jackie was fortunate to have these two women as constants. So was I. I count my blessings that they found their way into our lives.

Still, did I feel guilt? How do I count the ways? Is there a working mother on earth who doesn’t? Mine was compounded in the sixties and seventies by the fact that working mothers like me were still a minority. These days the pendulum has swung so far the other way, toward work, that sizable numbers of mothers are leaving the workforce to stay home with their children. There is no perfect solution. Just exhaustion. And, my favorite word, guilt. I am known for saying that you
can’t
have it all—a great marriage, successful career, and well-adjusted children—at least not at the same time. It’s a bit easier today because there are employers who are more flexible, who may let you work part-time, and there are BlackBerries so you can work wherever you are, and there are husbands who will change diapers. But it’s still a balancing act and probably always will be.

I cherished every moment I could spend with Jackie. We would sit on the floor many an afternoon and play with her “mouse house,” a sort of doll’s house I had bought her with little Mommy and Daddy mice and their mousy children. We spent every weekend I was home together, often with Shirley, who adored Jackie almost as much as I did. Summers, Lee and I rented a house in Long Island. My parents and my sister, Jackie, visited and couldn’t keep their hands off our baby. They would play with her all afternoon in the sandbox or the little rubber tub we kept in the backyard. God knows how she ever learned to walk, because one or the other of them, my mother, father, or sister, was always holding her or wheeling her around the block in her stroller. Jackie rewarded them by being the most adorable girl imaginable. Almost from babyhood Jackie would give my father what he called her “show business smile.” This was a big broad smile the toddler somehow knew delighted her grandpa. My heart melted seeing my father so happy around his grandchild.

Lee was also a loving and devoted father. As in many cases when a man has a second family, Lee could and did spend more time with his little Jackie than he did with his other two children when they were young. First of all, he had been very busy establishing his career, and second, his marriage to their mother wasn’t that happy. Although it was usually the weekends when he and I could play with Jackie together, Lee was home most mornings when I was at work, and I was with her in the evenings when Lee was at one of his theaters. There was no doubt that she was the darling of our lives.

As baby Jackie grew older, she loved being with her aunt Jackie. They would do coloring books together, and the little girl particularly loved brushing and combing my sister’s long blond hair. But there gradually came the time when the little Jackie outgrew these activities with the big Jackie. Without our ever articulating it, she knew that her aunt wasn’t as bright as she was. I can’t remember when this actually occurred, probably when the child was about ten or twelve. But my sister always loved her namesake, and little Jackie was unfailingly kind to her.

My biggest concern was when and how I should tell Jackie she was adopted. There was no question in my mind that I would. At that time there were two popular and quite different theories. One was to wait until the child was old enough to understand and then explain that she was a “chosen” child. The alternative was simply not to tell the child at all.

For advice I turned to Haim Ginott, a delightful, commonsense Israeli child psychologist who appeared regularly on the
Today
show and had a great sense of humor. (I once asked him whether it was all right to spank a child when he or she was really naughty, and he replied: “I’ve always felt that if it’s a choice between spanking the child or killing the child, spanking is better.” But I never did spank Jackie.)

He suggested I should just let the adoption come up naturally with Jackie, with no timetable.

Dr. Ginott was very big on parents bathing with their young children of the same sex. I thought this made sense. I looked forward at the end of almost every day to taking a bath with Jackie. The tub became our adoption forum. I loved soaping her up and splashing away with her. She would sometimes touch my breasts and my body. Jackie was curious, and I felt that here would be my opportunity. I held her little body against me. “Some babies come from their mommies’ tummies,” I would tell her to make things understandable. “But you, my darling, you were born in my heart.”

I meant it then. I still do.

Dean Rusk, Golda Meir, Henry Kissinger, and Prince Philip

T
HERE WERE TIMES
when I wondered why, as the mother of a small child, I would allow myself to work in dangerous surroundings and circumstances. The first time I questioned this was just two months after we’d brought Jackie home, when I was being teargassed at the infamous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was August 1968; the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart, and the rift came to a head that terrible week. And it was all being televised for everyone to see.

All of us from
Today
were staying at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, right across the street from Grant Park, where there were multiple and furious confrontations between the baton-and tear gas–wielding Chicago police, the Illinois National Guard armed with automatic weapons, and the thousands of antiwar demonstrators who had come from all over the country. Our production office in the hotel became an informal infirmary for some of the bruised and battered demonstrators. One of our production assistants was beaten with a billy club by a member of Mayor Daley’s riot police, as were twenty-one other journalists and photographers. Our press credentials were no protection during the riots. I wasn’t beaten, but I was reporting from right in front of our hotel, filming the police clubbing people and dragging them into paddy wagons. I will always remember the sickeningly sweet smell of tear gas spreading through the crowds and permeating the Hilton.

In spite of it all there was a challenge and a thrill reporting such a story. When a reporter is in danger, he or she usually loses all fear. I know I do. For a time you put your real life aside—or maybe this
is
your real life.

The year 1968 had already been a violent one: Martin Luther King Jr. had been gunned down in Memphis in April and Bobby Kennedy had been shot to death in California in June. Overseas, American soldiers were dying in increasing numbers in Vietnam. We documented the escalating casualty rate, which had reached more than 36,000 dead, every morning on
Today
, with no end in sight.

President Lyndon Johnson was a political casualty of the war. He had announced at the end of March that he would not seek reelection. Thus, five months later, this chaotic Democratic convention had drawn many groups in support of the antiwar presidential candidates, Senators George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy. They also came to protest the potential nomination of LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and his presumed continuation of Johnson’s war policy. Those four days in Chicago were a nightmare for America, but for the reporters it was where the news was, and where we wanted to be.

Humphrey won the Democratic nomination despite the protests, though he didn’t win the presidential election. He was narrowly defeated in November by Republican Richard Nixon, thus marking the end of the Democratic administration. That included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who had served under both President Kennedy and President Johnson, making him the second-longest-serving secretary of state in history. (Only Cordell Hull, under FDR, had held that position longer.) Rusk, considered by many to be a stubborn architect of the Vietnam War, kept his own counsel and did few interviews. Knowing he was going to leave the government, everyone wanted to interview him. I did, too, but I didn’t think I had much of a chance. There were too many senior political and diplomatic correspondents vying for the chance, including veteran journalists Eric Sevareid and Walter Cronkite at CBS. Plus I hadn’t done any really important political interviews. But I had a curious advantage over the other correspondents.

I’d met Rusk at a Washington cocktail party in the summer of 1967. Hugh was on vacation, and I was heading the morning show alone, which the secretary of state evidently took note of. A week into my assignment I got an unexpected fan letter from him, which still hangs, framed, on the wall in my apartment. This is what he wrote:

The Secretary of State

Washington

August 28th, 1967

Dear Miss Walters,

As a regular viewer of the Today Show, my spirit moves me to write you a little note to say how much I admire and appreciate the job you are doing. Perhaps I was moved to do so by your splendid handling of the show in August.

If NBC Vice Presidents ever begin to bother you, show them this letter and others like it and tell them to leave you alone.

Cordially yours,

Dean Rusk

I was surprised and delighted with this personal and rather humorous letter from a man not known for being personal or humorous. I immediately wrote him a thank-you note and asked for an interview. He declined politely, and that was that. Then, wonder of wonders, soon after he left office, he chose me to sit down with him for his first interview. His fan letter to me had obviously been a sincere one, but still, his choosing me was very important to my career.

My first serious and exclusive political interview took place in a room at the Hay Adams hotel in Washington. Secretary Rusk and I talked for four long hours, and covered everything from Johnson’s, and his, controversial Vietnam policy to his own personal reminiscences of life inside the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations. When we finished he thanked me for not asking him any frivolous or naive questions that would have “embarrassed” him, to which I replied that
I
would have been embarrassed to ask them. Then we went outside to go on to our next appointments. And it is the next moment that has stayed in my memory all these years.

I had a car waiting to whisk me to the airport so I could start editing the film in New York. I presumed that the former secretary of state would have one waiting for him as well, but he didn’t. “I no longer have a government car,” he told me. “I’ll just grab a cab.” I was stunned. Here was this man who had been one of the most powerful people in the world with cars and planes at his disposal. Here was I, a reporter, offering a lift to the former secretary of state, a man to whom the whole country had looked. All the trappings of power and success were gone. He thanked me for my offer but went off in a taxi.