The Legacy (22 page)

At the invitation of Tom Lavette to join him at a small dinner party, Carson Devron made the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Carson's father, a man who never minced words, had told him bluntly that to sever connections with the Lavettes because of a divorce would be both immature and damaging. “A decent alliance between us,” he told Carson, “would give us the whole state, the north and the south. And don't ever become bemused by my use of the word state. California is not a state. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont — those are states. California is an empire, the richest damned empire on the face of this earth. We'll have a man in the White House one day, mark my word, and meanwhile, you husband your connections. You don't sulk and let them wither and die.”

On Carson's part there was no deep animus toward Tom Lavette. He knew the story of Norman Drake, onetime member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, in regard to Barbara, and one could take the position that Tom Lavette had behaved very badly toward his sister. On the other hand, from Tom's point of view, his sister had betrayed him. Carson had never discussed the matter with Lavette, and since the divorce, he had nurtured a romantic, agonizing memory of Barbara. The memory soured him for other women. His sexual affairs were brief and unsatisfying, and he measured each woman he met against Barbara. Tom Lavette provided at the very least a connection with the family, and Carson reacted to this in an adolescent manner. Tom was her brother. He looked like her, the same high cheekbones and straight brow, the same tall, well-knit figure, the same light brown hair and gray eyes. It was at least a connection, some small bulwark to Carson's resistance to his family's urging that he marry and produce children.

Tonight, at the dinner party, Lucy Lavette had provided a pretty young woman, Alice Kimble, as Carson's dinner partner. She was a blue-eyed blonde, recently divorced, who practiced the dubious virtue of saying practically nothing. The other guests were a man called Mark Fowler and his wife, Marian. Fowler was short, stocky, heavy sloping shoulders and a shambling walk, a soft-spoken ape-like man with flat, heavy features, in contrast to his tall, slender, good-looking wife. Carson had met him casually at various publishing affairs and conventions. He owned a string of eighteen mostly small-town newspapers in Northern California and in Oregon as well as five television stations. His enterprises were family-owned, and as with many nonpublic corporations, rumors of his wealth varied widely. Carson had heard it said that his properties were worth half a billion dollars, but no firm figure was available.

At dinner, the conversation turned to politics, and Carson listened with some bitterness to Fowler's offhand dismissal of Norman Drake. “We should have known from the beginning,” he said. “The man's a fool, and limited. Grossly limited. That's no reflection on you,” he said to Tom. “We were all taken in. I dislike the term kingmaker, but it defines us, and a kingmaker ought to be damn sure he selects the right material. Hell, it never was any different. There hasn't been a President since Lincoln who wasn't made, chosen, cut, and shaped by a few men who knew what they wanted.”

“What about F.D.R.?” Carson asked coldly.

“If we had Jim Farley here, he could give us a fine lecture on that point. Yes, Roosevelt was a vote-getter once he made his mark, but who put him in a place where he could make his mark? The same was true of Harry Truman.”

“Who do you have in mind?” Tom asked him.

“Dick Nixon.”

“Nixon!” Carson exclaimed. “After what Kennedy did to him? I'd say that Nixon is finished, and I might add good riddance to bad rubbish. The man is a disaster.”

“Yet when Norman Drake washed out at the convention, you supported Nixon.”

“We had no choice. I think we've heard the last of Mr. Nixon, and believe me, that doesn't make me unhappy.”

“You're wrong, Carson. Understandably so, but wrong. There's a strange charisma about Mr. Nixon. Like Norman Drake, he appeals to a level of mediocrity that most of us possess, to a nugget of meanness that we like to pretend we are free of, but unlike Drake, he has brains and a consuming, raging ambition.”

“He's a loser,” Carson argued. “A whimpering, whining loser.”

“Yes, but a very unusual one. He thrives on it — because people who don't understand him underestimate him. He's down but not out, believe me.”

“What is your thinking, Fowler?” Tom asked him. “You really believe that Nixon has the stamina to come back?”

“We have five years. Kennedy will be reelected — no way in the world you can stop that, even if this business in Vietnam heats up into a real war, as I suspect it will. That gives us five years, time to plan, to gather our resources” — Carson's face was cold and unsympathetic — “and to meet the man. I appreciate your reaction, Carson. It's the honest reaction of a decent human being. All I ask is that you keep an open mind until we can have an informal, off-the-record evening with Dick Nixon. I assure you, you'll be surprised. I'll arrange the meeting if you agree to come, just you, myself, Tom, one or two others. How about it?” For all of his homeliness, his mashed-in face, his overmuscled, hunched shoulders, he was an ingratiating man, a persuasive man.

“I'll come,” Carson agreed after a long moment of silence, “but I promise nothing. If you can accept an adversary opinion.”

“We need one. It brings out the best in Dick.”

“You look tired this morning,” Dr. Albright said to Barbara.

“Two hours of sleep will do it every time.”

“You couldn't sleep?”

“Carson called me at two o'clock in the morning. He had been in town for dinner at my brother's house, and then pacing in his room at the Mark Hopkins. I imagine he had a few drinks, and at two o'clock he decided to call me — pleading with me to let him come over. He had to talk to me.”

“When did you last speak to him?” Dr. Albright asked curiously.

“Over a year ago. And before that, not since the divorce.”

“And you let him come?”

“I can't refuse Carson when he pleads. He's like a child. And Sam is up at Higate. Do you think I shouldn't have?”

“What do you think, Barbara? I don't know what happened.”

“We talked,” Barbara said.

She had dragged herself out of bed, tired and chilled; combed her hair and brushed her teeth; and then Carson was at the door, apologizing.

“Please forgive me, Bobby. I've never done anything like this before. I feel like an idiot ——”

“Stop it, Carson. You're here.”

He looked around him curiously. He had been in the little house on Green Street only once before, years ago.

“Sit down,” Barbara told him, leading him into the living room. “I'm going to put on some coffee. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

“No. Thank you.”

“You'll have coffee?”

He nodded. She left him there and waited in the kitchen while the water boiled, trying to recollect how he had his coffee. Black, yes, black. Why did it all seem so very long ago? He had changed; he had lost weight and his face was drawn; he was no longer the beautiful golden boy but a man approaching middle age. When she returned to the living room with a tray, coffee, toast, and a pot of jam, he was sitting rigidly, his hands clenched.

“Carson, will you please relax,” she said to him. “You were in trouble and you called me. That's all right. We're not enemies or strangers. We're good old friends.” She handed him the cup of coffee. “Toast and jam? It's that dark Seville marmalade that you always liked so much.”

He managed a tired smile.

“Now, what happened?”

“I don't know. It's just that my world has been creaking, and suddenly it came apart. The whole damn thing came apart. I feel like I'm standing on a precipice, and I'm not alone. The whole damn world pushing behind me. I want to run away. I swear to God, I want to chuck the whole thing and run away, and I know I haven't got the guts to do it.”

“We've all felt that way, and none of us have the guts to do it. Tell me what happened. You had dinner with Tom.”

“With Tom and a man called Mark Fowler, newspaper publisher and television. He owns five stations, which is right up to the legal limit. Very powerful, very rich. He's one of a group of men who, along with your brother, calls the tune west of the Rockies. The whole purpose of the dinner, as I see it, was to enlist me, meaning the Devron interests, in a scheme to groom Richard Nixon for the presidency five years from now.”

Barbara was not impressed. It didn't appear to add up to a crisis worth dragging her out of bed at two o'clock in the morning, and she observed that after his defeat by Kennedy, it was unlikely that Nixon could be groomed for anything. “And even if he were to be inflicted on us again, you were not very disturbed about putting Norman Drake through the same process. Is Nixon any worse?” And when Carson stared at her without replying, she said unhappily, “I didn't want to bring that up, Carson, but it is the same kettle of fish, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I just don't understand.”

“I suppose it adds up. You take something for granted, and then you don't take it for granted anymore. I don't know. You see it from another angle. You touch it and it's rotten — and then you begin to look at other things, and it's all rotten. It's not a question of illusions. I don't have that many illusions. It's like a sickness that's all around you, and suddenly you realize that you're as sick as the rest.”

“Did you go along with them?”

“Fowler pointed out that this is how Presidents are made. I couldn't argue that. Yes, I agreed to meet with Nixon and talk to him. Then, afterwards, back at the hotel, my world went to pieces. Can you understand me? Does it make any sense — what I'm saying?”

“Yes, it makes sense.”

“And then the fear began. I've never been afraid like this before, Bobby. You know that. Not during the war — never. My God, I was so frightened. I called you. I'm sorry —”

He was sitting on the couch. Barbara went to him and sat beside him. “It's all right,” she said. “You'll work it out, Carson.”

“We talked for another hour,” Barbara told Dr. Albright. “Then he went back to his hotel. He talked about other women in his life since our divorce. There's one now who is in love with him. He may marry her. He said he still loves me.”

“Barbara, when did it begin? His impotence? His inability to make love to you?”

“On our honeymoon.”

“After your day with the auto manufacturer?”

“Before that. I don't know how he is with other women. He was wonderful with me before we were married. I wish I could understand this thing he's going through now. Do you?”

“He's not my patient. You are.”

“I felt like his mother.”

“Yes.”

“No, if that's what you're suggesting. He didn't marry his mother.”

“I suggested nothing, Barbara.”

“I did.”

“Perhaps. Do you understand why you divorced him? That's the important thing.”

“It wasn't the Norman Drake business. Last night, when he was talking about how his world had been shattered, I wondered why mine had never been shattered. Not that way. I've been through so much — growing up in that golden cage up there on Russian Hill, and then the longshore strike, and then Paris and the Spanish war, and Marcel's death, and Germany and the war, and Bernie's death. Carson never even touched the edge of my world. Yes, I was depressed. That's why I came to you — my world was shattered, wasn't it?”

“By now you know what depression means, Barbara. It's turning your bitterness, your resentment, your frustration against yourself— all your suppressed rage building up through your life and turned in.”

“I was thinking,” Barbara said slowly, “while you were talking, of my first day in the studio when they hired me to do the screenplay of my first book. I was given an office, a desk, a typewriter, and a ream of cheap yellow paper. I've never used yellow paper. It's a silly economy. The white bond costs five dollars a ream and the yellow paper is a dollar or two less. So I told one of the secretaries to order me a ream of white paper through studio supply. Two days later she came to me in tears. She was being fired because she had ordered the white paper. This happened in a place where they throw around money as if it were going out of style, where they charge all their wretched twenty-dollar lunches and limousines and parties and travel expenses and anything else they can think of against the picture, and this poor kid was being fired because she ordered white paper instead of yellow. At first, I couldn't believe it, and then I was so angry I could have killed the producer ——”

“Did you?” Dr. Albright asked gently. “Did you kill the producer?”

“Of course not,” Barbara replied impatiently. “But I stopped the firing. I told them that if they fired the girl, I'd walk out of there. Later, they might have welcomed that. But then they still needed me.”

“Politely? Restrainedly?”

“Yes. I simply made it clear to them how I felt.”

“Barbara, when I asked you before whether you killed the producer, I was not being literal. We both understand that. You don't go around killing people.”

“Of course ——”

“Wait. Let me go on a moment. You had witnessed an obscene piece of business. Wouldn't it have been quite appropriate for you to explode in anger, to tell them precisely what you thought of that kind of behavior?”

“I don't do things that way,” Barbara said, after a moment.

“You did in prison — the incident with the guard.”

“Yes. I guess I was provoked to a point—” She shook her head tiredly.

“And that other incident you told me about, that time in Germany before the war, when you saw the old Jew struck and kicked by the SS man?”