Watergate (47 page)

By the time he saw Nixon on late Saturday afternoon, it was the president whose speech seemed a bit slurred; his own had been as crisp as he could ever recall it. “I’m sorry that you insist on putting your personal commitments ahead of the public interest,” Nixon had more or less recited. And he himself had replied, politely, that they each seemed to have a different view of the latter.

So here he was, three days later, ready to tell the assembled Justice Department employees—he could hear them buzzing out there in the auditorium—that he’d just cleaned out his desk.

When he stepped onto the stage, one would have thought the Boston Red Sox had just beaten the Yankees for the American League pennant—and that he was the winning pitcher.

He looked around sheepishly, as if all this were really unnecessary. He promised to be brief, and he was: praising Nixon’s overall policies; making it appear that sorrow was trumping anger, let alone pleasure. “I have been compelled to conclude that I could better serve my country by resigning from public office than by continuing in it.”
He could picture the plaque onto which this sentence would soon be engraved. It would hang next to the one from the ABA, not far from the easel.

And that was it. No hamming it up and botching things the way MacArthur had. Within minutes he was being driven west toward home, past the White House, where a protester’s
HONK FOR IMPEACHMENT
sign was being met with deafening, almost universal compliance. Oh, the temptation to roll down the tinted window and show them who was here! But he resisted.

At three o’clock, back in McLean and alone in the study, he mixed himself a cocktail, took out his paint box, and put on the radio. Archie was having a press conference, declaring that he’d decided to stay in town for a bit, in case the Ervin or Judiciary committee wanted testimony from
him
. Richardson supposed he, too, should be prepared for that, though he rather wished Archie had resisted going before the press so soon after he had. He felt a bit as if the batter who’d merely driven in the winning run were crowding the pitcher out of the locker room photo.

Now
,
though numberless fates of death beset us which no mortal can escape or avoid
,
let us go forward together
,
and either we shall give honor to one another
,
or another to us
.

Over the weekend he’d quoted this, from the
Iliad
, to Archie. It was inscribed—correctly, he wondered?—on a photo here in his study, a gift from Judge Learned Hand, for whom, in addition to Frankfurter, Richardson had once clerked. Only now did it occur to him that Cox, too, had clerked for Judge Hand; perhaps he had the same photo with the same inscription.

Well, whatever the case, there was really no
us
about it anymore. He was now on his own—an odd position for a perpetual appointee—and he must wait until the brief Ford presidency, when he would get himself appointed anew and be carried by another man for the last time, across the ultimate threshold.

He dipped into the darkest brown paint in the box and applied some last touches to the tail feathers of the buff-breasted sandpiper.

The radio said that Kissinger was already back from Moscow with a cease-fire, but that there would be no press conference by the secretary
of state in view of all the commotion on Capitol Hill and at the federal courthouse, where Charles Alan Wright, Richard Nixon’s new lawyer, had said that his client would surrender the tapes after all, because, of course, “this president does not defy the law.”

Richardson rinsed his brush and thought he could almost hear the sandpiper singing.

“Mr. President, I have Mrs. Onassis.”

“Thank you, Operator. Happy Thanksgiving, Jackie.”

“They found me here in Peapack!”

The breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice was unchanged—and he knew it was for real. He could recall the first time he’d heard her, twenty years ago, before he’d ever even seen Monroe in a movie.

“When we lived in the White House,” she now told him, “the operators used to amaze me. They once found my sister when she was shopping for shoes in Marrakech! And here I am in my little gray house in New Jersey.”

Nixon laughed. He didn’t imagine the house was all that small. “Well, I just wanted to wish you a wonderful day.”

“Oh, you beat me to it, Mr. President! I wanted to thank you for your wonderful
words
. I heard them on the radio this morning.”

He himself had seen the Thanksgiving proclamation on his desk only a couple of hours ago. At first he’d been annoyed by what he guessed was a Ray Price flourish, about the coincidence of today and the tenth anniversary of Dallas:
As we give thanks for the goodness of the land
,
therefore
,
let us also pause to reflect on President Kennedy’s contributions to the life of this nation we love so dearly
. But he’d decided it was probably all right, especially with the commentators still going on about how he’d really canned Cox for being a Kennedy man.

“Well, we all miss Jack,” he told Mrs. Onassis.

“You’re so kind to say that, and to
do
this. You and Lyndon have both been so good to me. I should call Lady Bird, shouldn’t I? It just occurred to me that this must be her first Thanksgiving without him. You know,” she added, as if fearing any pause in the conversation, “the children just treasure the letters you wrote them after we came to see the portraits.”

She laid it on thick, but she always had a way of making you believe it. “Well, you know we’d love to have you back anytime,” he responded.

“Are you and Mrs. Nixon having Thanksgiving in the White House?”

He noticed her artful deflection of his open invitation. “We’re going up to Camp David a little later.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. I don’t think we ever made enough use of it.”

Why would they have, once Papa Joe got them that place in the Virginia horse country?

“Are the children with you today?” he asked. There was no point inquiring about Onassis, who apparently was never around. Having gotten what he wanted, he didn’t need to gaze upon it.

“Oh, yes,” said Kennedy’s widow. “We went to mass this morning, and we’ll go riding later.”

“I saw some of the family at the president’s grave this morning. The television had a picture. I think it was Mrs. Lawford standing in the middle.”

“I didn’t see it.”

Had he been wrong to bring this up—as if implying she were derelict by her absence? He wished he had a talking-points card, the little series of cues and compliments and personal facts that Rose would have prepared for a call to any national committeewoman having a birthday. No gaffes that way.

“It’s been such a wonderful and terrible week,” said Mrs. Onassis.

He knew the terrible part: Teddy’s boy losing a leg to bone cancer. But the wonderful part? Had one of Bobby’s kids gotten married? Fortunately, she kept talking. “I heard from my sister-in-law that you sent Teddy Jr. the most wonderful letter—handwritten! I don’t know where you find the time.”

“I saw my brothers go through so much at his age,” said Nixon.

“Yes.”

It was clear she knew nothing about all that, whereas of course everyone was expected to absorb every bit of the Kennedy legend. Still, he’d never disliked her. She was a lot nicer than the gene pool she’d dived into by marrying Jack. Johnson thought the same thing.

But this call was a mistake. All the stiff overstatement was depressing him. He’d had them ring her on impulse, always a bad idea, after
Connally had called him this morning. Mostly with political advice: accuse the Democrats of delaying on Ford to steal the presidency and put in Albert. But the two of them had of course wound up talking of how Connally had gotten shot up that day, nearly bleeding to death while all the doctors worked on the already-dead JFK.

“Well, Jackie, I do hope you have a wonderful day in spite of this terrible anniversary.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. President!” Once she realized he was ready to wind up the conversation, she couldn’t keep her relief from being audible. “You enjoy it, too! And please give my best to your family.”

He sat at the desk for a couple of minutes, thinking how strange it had been for
him
to wake up at the old Baker Hotel in Dallas that same morning. He’d been eager to get out of the city ever since the previous day’s luncheon, when the Pepsi-Cola bottlers made it politely clear that they were more excited by Joan Crawford’s presence on the dais than his own. Friday morning, on the way to the airport, he’d seen all the flags set up along the motorcade route, and he’d been painfully aware that he was on the wrong side of the divide, traveling in the opposite direction from the one Kennedy would soon be taking. Late that night, up alone in the New York apartment, he’d written to Jackie, and her oddly sloppy reply, in ballpoint ink and full of dashes, had come in the mail a few weeks later. He still had it by heart:
I know how you must feel—so long on the path—so closely missing the greatest prize—and now for you all the question comes up again … Just one thing I would say to you—if it does not work out as you have hoped for so long—please be consoled by what you already have—your life and your family
.

Would they have been consolation enough had he not tried again, or had he lost in ’68? He swiveled in his chair to regard the faces in the framed photographs on the shelf behind the desk. They were positioned for the TV cameras to pick up whenever he spoke from here. Would they be consolation enough
now
, if he had to give up what he’d sought, and sought again, and finally won?

Well, thought Pat, this is a new record: worst Thanksgiving ever. Dinner consumed, start to finish, in thirty-five minutes flat.

“A stupendous meal,” said Bebe Rebozo to the navy steward bringing him a second cup of coffee. Ed and Tricia Cox nodded their agreement, as did the president and, finally, the first lady.

Rebozo turned to Nixon. “There’s only one thing you could have improved upon.”

The president smiled and asked, “What would that be?” Feeding Bebe straight lines was one of his few forms of relaxation.

“You should have brought Richardson up here to mix the cocktails. They’d have been a little stronger.”

Word had gotten around Washington of Haig’s phone call to the well-lit attorney general the night before the so-called Massacre.

Nixon laughed. “You know, Elliot’s crowd are now saying we’ve deliberately been spreading the word about his boozy run-ins with the law. Not true.”

“I’ve only been around him a couple of times,” said Rebozo. “But let me tell you, he was so marinated, I thought, If this guy opts for cremation over burial, the body’s going to burn for six months.”

Pat looked at Tricia, the crueler of her daughters, who was laughing. She herself liked Bebe just fine; it was better for Dick to have one friend than no friends, as had been the case when they married, but she didn’t want this—the two of them joking as if they still had the upper hand. Black humor she could understand; this was just stupid.

“I tell you, though,” said Nixon. “Haig’s made no bones about calling Elliot a liar, and I’m all for getting that out. He was
there
. He welshed on an agreement that he’d made himself.”

Pat imagined what would be happening if Richardson had kept his word. John Stennis would be spending Thanksgiving with his hand cupped to his ear, leaning in to listen to all those half-audible tapes and going out of his mind.

“What have you got for us tonight?” the president asked the steward, who would know what movie they were rigging up.

“
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
, sir.”

Pat laughed, sardonically. “Gregory Peck.”

Nixon looked puzzled.

“He’s on your enemies list.”

The president smirked. “
My
list. I never even heard of the thing until Dean mentioned it. If it belonged to anybody, it was Colson’s list.”

Pat rose from the table and, without excusing herself, walked off to her bedroom. To her considerable surprise, Dick followed to see what was the matter. For a moment she was touched, but she knew the flash of gratitude would not be enough to cap the gusher of rage that seemed at last ready to escape. It had been building for months, and had nearly burst forth during the helicopter ride up here.

“Anything wrong, honey?” her husband asked. “I thought we’d call Rose and say hello. I was sort of hoping you’d get on the line.”

“Do you know why Rose isn’t here?”

Nixon laughed, effortfully. “Well, Rose has become a city girl.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a reporter,” Pat snapped. “I told her months ago that we’d have Thanksgiving in the White House, but then the horns started honking and we had to come here so we didn’t go out of our minds like three years ago. And Rose
would
have come here—not liking Camp David is just something she says—but she didn’t want to come because she’s too nervous. Do you know where she
is
spending Thanksgiving? ”