by Paul Wolfe
That she was one of a kind, he had no doubt. And working side by side with Cord Meyer, the man who had lost her, he knew the depths of the loss this man carried with him. Maybe that is why another man had risked his own presidency to be with her.
Angleton inhaled some cigarette smoke and glanced again at the newspaper headline. Then he picked up the leather-bound diary and the loose page that had fallen from it, a diagram of the operation to assassinate President John F. Kennedy entitled JM/RESET. He carried them to the fireplace and tossed them into the flames. The book of Mary seemed to turn liquid in the blaze, a story of a woman who no longer was, curling first into flame and then ash in the orange glow.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction inspired by fact. With the exception of family members and public figures, all characters in this “diary” are fictional, and virtually all events, dialogue, conversation, and personal musings imaginary.
Mary Pinchot Meyer was a real woman who remains a cipher. Two books and numerous articles have scoured the mysteries of this private person who spent her life surrounded by famous ones. Each ran headlong into the veil of silence that went up among friends and family and colleagues following her unsolved murder. The most commonly recurring line in each book is: “Refused to be interviewed.” And each devotes considerable time to the events after her death, such as the trial of a man charged with and then acquitted of her murder.
So Mary Pinchot Meyer remains a cipher. This is so even visually. Less than a handful of crude snapshots exist of her as an adult, none looking at the camera, none posed, none offering a clear sense of what she actually looked like.
That she had an intimate relationship with John F. Kennedy is fairly well established, but no tapes or transcripts of their affair exist, and not a single word or interaction is recorded for history.
That she was a member of the Georgetown set in the early 1960s and attended parties, dinners, and cultural events with the likes of the Grahams, the Alsops, the Coopers, the Bruces, the Angletons, and her sister Tony and brother-in-law Ben Bradlee is also well established. But again, no tapes, no transcripts, not a single conversation, incident, or martini is recorded for posterity.
That she had a relationship with Timothy Leary seems probable but not confirmed, and certainly no conversation, let alone drug experience, is recorded for history.
That she was a painter in the Washington Color School is proven by paintings that exist in private collections and museums, thoroughly inaccessible to the public.
What we are left with is a cipher, but a fascinating cipher. So I took the liberty of reimagining her. Or perhaps just imagining her. I found an extraordinary woman who seemed to embody and anticipate every current of female liberation, political activism, and psychedelic exploration that would explode on the world just hours after her death in 1964.
This is a work of fiction, so even the “real people” in this novel speak and act in totally imaginary situations. But following her death, here is what really happened to them.
Antoinette “Tony” Pinchot Bradlee outlived her sister by nearly half a century. She and Ben Bradlee divorced in the 1970s, and Tony spent her final years quietly devoted to sculpture, ceramics, and the esoteric teachings of Russian-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff.
Ben Bradlee went on to international fame as the Washington Post editor presiding over the Watergate scandal and the demise of Richard Nixon. He married society journalist Sally Quinn following his divorce from Mary’s sister, and lived a life of ever-increasing awards and veneration. He died in 2014 at the age of ninety-three, denying his CIA affiliations to the end. All accounts of his ex-sister-in-law, Mary Pinchot Meyer—from the time and manner of his discovery of her death, to his withholding of facts at the trial of the acquitted murder suspect, to his memoir tale of collusion with James Jesus Angleton to destroy her diary—form a tortuous half-century of conflicting and contradictory narratives.
James Jesus Angleton continued as the head of counterintelligence in the CIA until he was terminated in disgrace in 1975, following revelations of massive illegal surveillance and mail tampering of American citizens. He died of lung cancer in 1987, withered by decades of chain smoking, alcoholism, and secrets. His eccentricity and towering presence in the CIA, coupled with virtual invisibility, created a mystique that continues to inspire books and films to this day. Said one historian: “One could ask a hundred people about James Jesus Angleton and receive a hundred different replies, ranging from utter denunciation to unadulterated hero worship.”
Timothy Leary carried on indefatigable, evolving from LSD guru to one-man cultural phantasmagoria: clown, seer, scientist, shaman, author, actor, international outlaw, then prophet and pioneer of the digital age. He died in Beverly Hills at the age of seventy-five, surrounded as always by friends, freaks, and followers mindful of his final pronouncement: “I’m going to give death a better name or die trying.”
Joe Alsop continued writing his syndicated column until 1974 and remained a consummate connoisseur until the end. His private collection grew to include family portraits of illustrious ancestors, Japanese lacquer, Chinese porcelain, and ancient bronzes from Persia. His homosexuality pervaded gossip in Washington and files within the CIA and FBI, but he never publicly disclosed it. He died in Georgetown in 1989.
Frank Wisner continued a long slide into depression and mania and committed suicide in 1965.
Kenneth Noland painted on, a minimalist in terms of art but apparently a maximalist in terms of women. Mary Pinchot Meyer was but one of a long series of both married and unmarried liaisons. He died in 2010, his color field paintings celebrated in numerous exhibitions and museum collections.
Anne Truitt became an internationally renowned artist. Her painted sculptures grace the collections of the National Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney. She was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and five honorary doctorates before her death in Washington, DC, in 2004.
Katharine Graham endured abuse, humiliation, and threats to the control of her family’s Washington Post from a continuously unbalanced Phil Graham, which all ended with his suicide in 1963. She went on to legendary fame and veneration as the storied publisher of the Post, pioneering woman executive, and Pulitzer Prize–winning memoirist.
Cord Meyer moved into Mary’s town house in Georgetown following her death. He continued overseeing the CIA infiltration of student and cultural institutions and the intimidation of media outlets into promoting the CIA line until his retirement in 1977. He died in 2001.
Mary’s sons, Quentin and Mark, carried the burden of their mother’s inexplicable murder into the tumult of the 1960s. They attended Yale and were “parented” by both their father, Cord Meyer, and their godfather, James Jesus Angleton. Quentin reportedly telephoned Timothy Leary impulsively and vainly at one point, demanding to know: “What happened to my mother?” Mark became a missionary. Neither ever agreed to speak to writers or journalists. Neither ever married.
Acknowledgments
My deepest gratitude to Sara Nelson, visionary editor who championed this work with a tenacity Mary would be proud of. Eternal thanks to my agent, Gail Hochmann, whose wisdom is matched only by her patience. And to the Mary in my own life who, since she’s Cuban, is named Maria . . . grateful for Maria Rita Caso’s unending friendship, coaching, and persistence.
My gratitude to Nina Burleigh and Peter Janney, who opened the door with their books A Very Private Woman and Mary’s Mosaic.
For all those who supported and encouraged along the way, I have not forgotten: Jamie Ambler, Angela Ambrosia, Leanne Averbach, Suze Barst, Edith Dube, Michael Greifinger, Marcus Kemp, Moses Kravitz, Nicole Kubin, Ray Lawrence, Mitch Mondello, Niland Mortimer, Wendy Oxenhorn, Karin Parn, Darci Picoult, Lisa Ritter-Kahn, Scott Williams, Linda Yellin.
About the Author
PAUL WOLFE has been an architect, a songwriter, and a multiple-award-winning writer in advertising
. He lives in New York City.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE LOST DIARY OF M. Copyright © 2020 by Paul Wolfe. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:
“if i should sleep with a lady called death.” Copyright 1923, 1925, 1951, 1953, © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage, from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Excerpt from “Little Gidding” from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1942 by T. S. Eliot, renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Joanne O’Neill
Cover photographs © Hank Walker / The LIFE Picture Collection /Getty Images (John F. Kennedy); 1942 Vassarion, Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College Library (Mary Pinchot Meyer)
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-291068-4
Version 10162019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291066-0
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