Read Online Watergate by Thomas Mallon - Free Book Online

brother, Stewart—solid old Truman-Kennedy Democrats—had taken to calling Richard Nixon in their columns, now that all the other old Cold Warriors, including Mrs. Braden’s husband, yet another columnist, had hopped aboard McGovern’s psychedelic bus.
    “Goodbye, dear,” said Mrs. Longworth to the much-younger Mrs. Braden. She didn’t get up to see her out.
    “I can’t stand her,” said Alsop, once Mrs. Braden was gone. “She’s a loudmouth knockoff of Ethel,” he added, meaning Bobby Kennedy’s widow. “You know how her husband got the money for that paper he used to run out in California? By letting his wife sleep with Nelson Rockefeller, that’s how.”
    “That’s hardly news,” said Mrs. Longworth. “And if it weren’t true, I wouldn’t like her as much as I manage to.”
    “What’s she
doing
here?” asked Alsop. “Why isn’t she home with her eight children? And what kind of courtesan
has
eight children?”
    Joe’s problem, Mrs. Longworth knew, involved the one thing that procreation and prostitution had in common: sex itself. Mrs. Bradendidn’t bother her. Imagine: hatching that brood and still having time—before, during, and after the breeding—to sleep with Rockefeller and, so it was said, with Bobby as well. That might be carrying the Ethel imitation rather far, but when Mrs. Longworth had asked, Mrs. Braden had owned up to it. Alice might have asked her about the Kissinger rumor, too, if the possibility of its being true didn’t revolt her in a purely aesthetic way.
    Poor Joe, pouring himself a cup of tea and looking as if he’d swallowed a bad clam. He was miserable these days with Susan Mary, and nothing, thought Mrs. Longworth, could be more ridiculous. What was the point of a
mariage blanc
if all the partners did was fight? She’d known Joe was queer as a plaid rabbit from the time he was a boy, and back in ’61, unlike everyone else, she had
not
approved of his marrying the widow Patten—as if that could solve everything, or give Joe equal status with all those virile men of Camelot on whom he had his carnal and ideological crushes.
    He was twenty-six years her junior and, sitting across from her, looked like a very old man. “So, Joe,” she asked, as he took another sip of tea. “When did I last see you?”
    “The Gridiron dinner. April.”
    “That’s right. And it was no fun at all, except for crossing the picket line.” The club now allowed female guests at its big annual event but still didn’t admit women as members. “So stupid of Dick not to go. For the second straight year, too. All because he finds the jokes rough. That’s carrying your
homme sérieux
business a bit far.”
    A thought struck Alice, and pleased her. “He should have said he couldn’t go because he was siding with the women. Had his cake and eaten it.” She sliced Joe a piece of the delicious chocolate layer cake that sat between them. Her guests were always surprised to find what she served so moist and fresh; they expected Miss Havisham’s wedding cake along with the cracked leather cushions and the crumbling taxidermy.
    “I just wrote him a contribution for forty-nine dollars,” said Alsop. “That’s one dollar under the limit of what’s got to be reported.”
    As if, thought Alice, Joe’s journalistic integrity, or whatever it’s called, was what he really had to worry about—instead of those photographsthe Soviets had had in their possession for years, of Joe in his Moscow hotel room in bed with a soldier.
    “You know, you really
do
look awful,” she told him.
    “Nothing’s felt right since Mother died.”
    “Your mother”—Father’s niece, and Alice’s first cousin—“was a grand gal. She was also eighty-five.”
    “You’re eighty-eight.”
    “And perfectly willing to be dead. How’s Stew?” How foolish that she should find it easier to ask after Joe’s brother, dying of leukemia, than to inquire about Susan Mary.
    “Not good,” said Alsop. “You’ll