by Sally Quinn
“Is it true? Are they going to dump the Chief of Staff?”
“How should I know?”
“C’mon, Sonny, let’s not fight. We’re going with it pretty hard for next week. From everything we’ve learned, it looks like Addison Marbury the Third is about to bite the dust. That Harry Saks is a real prick. Not that Marbury deserves to stay. But Jesus, I have never seen such maneuvering over there as I have from Saks. He really wants to be Chief of Staff in a bad way.”
“I have to tell you that I haven’t talked to Uncle Roger about this at all. So our sources are no better than yours. I will talk to him when we get ready to go with our story. But I have a feeling that Saks has leaked this to try and plant the idea, to create a groundswell to get rid of Marbury. Harry is such a shit. But I’m afraid Harry is a lot swifter than Addison. I just don’t think Addison is tough enough for the job. He can’t seem to keep Harry under control. And even if he does have the power, he isn’t perceived as having the power. I think the networks are going with this a little early. I think they’re being used. But then, what else is new?”
“Why haven’t you run anything about it? The Daily is usually the first to go with leaked rumors under some analysis column, just to get them on the record. I would think you guys would be all over this story.”
“We talked about it this morning. Walt feels that it’s a Saks plant, and so does everybody else. We just didn’t feel like letting Harry use us to get Addison. Anyway, it was a vague leak. It came from one of the secretaries in the White House Press Office. I guess Harry couldn’t find anybody else to do his dirty work except for that little tart he’s been screwing. It just smells, that’s all.”
“I agree, but what we don’t know is whether it’s true or not. I don’t understand why you haven’t asked Kimball.”
“I thought we could ask him in person tomorrow night. It will be your big chance to interview him yourself. See what you can get out of him.”
She had waited until the middle of the broadcast to drop that one. She took a sip of her wine and pretended to be watching the news.
At first he wasn’t sure he had heard her right. He was looking at the TV set as well. Then he turned to her. “Tomorrow night? What do you mean, tomorrow night?”
“Well, Aunt Molly called today. They noticed that we didn’t show up at the White House Christmas press party night before last.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Des. “I guess we should have gone. Were they upset?”
“Not really. Not when I explained to her why we didn’t go. I told her these things are mob scenes, so crowded that nobody can move, and that they always run out of booze halfway through the reception and that the receiving line is so long you have to stand outside on the South Lawn in freezing weather waiting to get in the door.”
“What did you just say about my being able to ask Kimball myself in person?”
“That was what Aunt Molly was calling about. She wants us to have dinner with them in the family dining room tomorrow night, a sort of Christmas dinner before they take off for Aspen. I told her I would love to and I knew you would love to as well unless you were too busy putting the magazine to bed. I did leave you an out.”
“Who else is going to be there?”
“I think it’s just the four of us.”
“Jesus Christ. They’ve never done this before.”
“I guess before they’ve felt more comfortable seeing me alone for tea on Saturday afternoons. They don’t really know you, and I don’t think they’ve really known whether or not we’re really living together or what. Aunt Molly knows you’re still married to Chessy and that you have your house on Twenty-first Street. I guess they haven’t felt all that comfortable embracing you into the ‘family’ without really knowing whether or not they could trust you.”
“So what’s changed?”
“I don’t know. I guess the last time I was over there she was asking me about you and I said we were pretty much living together. She said she was always a little shy around you because she didn’t think you liked her and she never knew quite what to think of us. I guess it was a big enough step for them to ask us to that one dinner this fall.”
“Holy shit. Dinner with the four of us. I don’t know, Sonny. I just don’t know.”
“I’ve also told them how difficult my relationship with them has made things for me, and they don’t want to put me in an awkward position. I told them it would be easier for me if my name or our names weren’t always on every White House guest list. Not that you would necessarily have gone along with it.”
Allison was thinking out loud, listening to the TV set with one ear, Des with the other. He was shaking his head.
“I don’t know whether this is a good idea. I mean, I could really be locked into a hell of a compromising situation if he said anything really important.”
“Oh, come on, Des. You’re big buddies with Malcolm and Abigail Sohier. Malcolm’s a Senator. You spend a lot of time with them. You don’t quote everything Malcolm tells you. I’ve heard him tell you dirty jokes, even racist ones, the way only one liberal can tell another liberal. You could devastate him if you printed those things. So could I, for that matter. You’ve never seemed to have a major crisis of conscience over that situation. What’s the difference? They’re both public officials. They’re both close friends. I just don’t think you can make that much distinction because one of them is the President.”
She had embarrassed him. She had a point. He was a close friend of Sohier’s and Sohier was the junior Senator from Massachusetts. He wouldn’t think of betraying a confidence of Malcolm’s, and he knew Malcolm knew that. They also had an implicit understanding about ground rules. If Malcolm were ever to say anything that smacked of a good news story, Des would immediately tell him to tell it off the record or for attribution or warn him that he was going to try to get a second source. Malcolm planted stories with Des that way. They were useful to each other. Des was always a little worried about the appearance of the friendship and the fact that sometimes things Malcolm told him in private were just not fair game for print. It made him feel guilty and a little ashamed in light of what Allison’s tough situation produced. She was probably a lot more careful and a lot more diligent about her relationship with her godfather than Des was about his with the Sohiers. Happily, Allison had the class not to rub this in. She didn’t have to. She had made her point.
“Don’t tell me you’re considering not going,” she said. She couldn’t help smiling. She knew he would never be able to resist. It was an invitation from the President of the United States. One never turned that down. Not unless the man was a fascist criminal. This was clearly not the case.
“Jesus H. Christ,” mumbled Des. “Holy Mary Mother of God. I guess I don’t have any choice. But I better tell the magazine.”
She jumped up from her spot on the sofa and went over to the chair where he was sitting on the other side of the fire. “Oh, Des, thank you. I would have been so depressed if I’d had to go alone. Besides, I don’t think Uncle Roger is feeling great these days and I know Aunt Molly worries about him. I don’t know what I would have told them. It would really have hurt their feelings.” She climbed up on his lap and buried her head in his neck, hugging him as tightly as she could. She hadn’t realized how relieved she was and how important it was to her that he go. There was a definite element of commitment in his acceptance. They sat still holding on to each other for a while, listening to the newscast in the background. Finally Des pulled away and looked at her.
“Okay,” he said. “Out with it. You were mad at me about something else too. We might as well get the whole thing over with tonight. I don’t want you sulking around all of Christmas and seething at me about something I don’t even know I did wrong. What is it?”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
She really didn’t want to fight with him now. Now that he had agreed to go to the White House. Besides, now it didn’t seem all that important.
“Sonny, don’t do this to me. I know you too well. You can’t hide it from me, and so you might as well tell me what you were so pissed off about. It didn’t start out to be about the Kimballs.”
She debated for a moment, saw that he was serious and that he was probably right. She should get it out of her system. She did feel depressed about Christmas and about missing Sam. It had been ten years since her father had been murdered in this house by robbers. Des was the only person she had really cared about since then. She felt very close to Des now. She should tell him.
“I was depressed that you didn’t help me with Christmas at all. I had to go get the tree and carry it in here, and set it up. Then I had to decorate it by myself. And hang the wreath and put the holly and poinsettias around.”
“Oh, shit,” he said. He eased her off his lap, got up to turn off the TV, then fixed himself another drink. He leaned against the mantel and looked down at her for a minute, then over at the beautiful tree, the pretty holly in vases on the mantel, then back down at her. He made a funny sucking noise with his mouth, as if he were trying to decide what to say. Then he spoke at last.
“Baby, you know I hate Christmas. I’ve told you a hundred times I hate Christmas. I can’t stand anything about it. It’s a nightmare to me. When I was little my parents never had enough money. They were always sad and apologetic on Christmas morning. You know what Santa brought us? Shit. That’s what Santa brought us. And we were good kids. We went to Mass on Sundays and said our Hail Marys and went to confession and did our homework. We had been good. And Santa brought us shit. And after we learned that there was no Santa it was almost worse because then we understood that it was our parents who couldn’t do for us. So we had to spend our Christmases making them feel like we didn’t care if we didn’t have ice skates when all the other kids would go out skating, or that we didn’t have a sled when the other kids went sledding. It was a pathetic little ritualistic farce. Even with a large Catholic family which should have been merry, it was hopeless. So we would go to Mass and pray that next Christmas would be better.”
Allison had rarely seen Des wound up. She was stunned by the emotion in his voice, by the genuineness of his feelings. She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but she didn’t want to stop him. He wanted to talk more. She let him.
After all, she had asked him to tell her his feelings, something he’d never done.
“Well, it got better, all right. For me, anyway. You see, I married a New York debutante, a little socialite, and my first Christmas with her was a nightmare. She had gone down to New York to Cartier’s and bought me the most expensive watch in the place. She had gone to Abercrombie and Fitch and bought me the most expensive game table in the place. She had hit Tripler’s and bought me cashmere bathrobes and cashmere sweaters and Bonwit’s for Turnbull and Asser shirts, and oh, God, it was awful. I had gone down to the nearest department store and I had bought her, in the costume-jewelry department, what I thought was a pretty crystal necklace. I don’t know, it cost maybe fifty bucks. That was all I could scrounge in those days on my salary. We were living in Back Bay in Boston on her dough, but I didn’t have any money. That was a lot for me then. And I wanted to get my parents something nice, too. You can imagine how embarrassing it was for me on Christmas morning. Her giant pile and my box of fake jewelry. You should have seen her face. I just kept opening and opening my presents, getting madder and more humiliated by the minute, and she didn’t see it.
“You ask me why I don’t help you with Christmas?”
He didn’t want an answer.
“The answer is that I hate Christmas and I don’t want to have to be a part of it. I’ve been dreading this weekend. I can see you have such great expectations for Christmas and I know I am bound to disappoint you. If you want Christmas, then do Christmas. But don’t expect me to get involved.”
He had been standing in front of the fire looking down. His face was flushed, not only from emotion but from the heat of standing next to the flames. She couldn’t remember being more in love with him than she was at this very moment. He looked so earnest. His black hair was curled over his forehead. She wanted to jump up and put her arms around him, but she couldn’t. Something made her feel as though she should be angry with him. Pride—something—made her unable to move.
Des turned and placed both his hands on the mantel, stretching his arms out and hanging his head in between his arms, staring down at the fire. He stood that way for a long time, the silence creating a strange nearness between them rather than a gulf. Then he stepped over to the side table and poured himself another Irish neat. He took a long swig of it, swallowed it, and leaned back against the mantel, staring at her this time. She could feel the heat from the fire beginning to ruddy her face. Suddenly she became afraid of what he was going to say next.
Finally, he smiled a little half-smile. “Why,” he said slowly, “couldn’t we be making love under a blinking tree?”
Relief made her nearly faint. She had braced herself for the worst. She let out a deep breath. She hadn’t breathed, she realized, in over a minute.
“Oh, Des!” she cried. Then, as in a trance, she got up from the sofa and went to him. She buried her head in his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist. She could feel the tears of relief streaming down her cheeks and she didn’t even try to stop them.
Des had one arm tight around her waist; with the other hand he stroked her head.
“Baby, baby, baby,” he kept murmuring as he stroked her, trying to soothe her. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right.”
“Oh, Des…” But she couldn’t get any more words out. Her body was racked with sobs she couldn’t control. It had been a long time in coming.
“What is it, Sonny? It couldn’t be what I said that’s making you cry. What is it?”
“It’s Sam. My Christmases with Sam. They were so wonderful. I loved him so. I miss him so much. I just wanted to re-create with you what I had with my father. You’re the first one I’ve ever done that with since he died. I just wanted a Christmas like the ones I had with Sam. Don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry. I expected too much from you. I should have explained.” She was choking on her words but it seemed deeply important to her now to get them out, to let him know how she felt, to finally tell him about Sam. She had kept it in so long, afraid to let Des see her vulnerability.
“Did Sam always go with you to get the tree?”
She nodded.
“Oh, Sonny, I didn’t realize.”
“It’s all right,” she said in a soft voice.
He lifted her face up to his so he could see it in the firelight. He kissed her gently on the lips, then licked at her tears.
“Do you understand how very much I love you? You are the most important thing in my life.”
She stared at him for a moment. He had told her before that he loved her. It had always seemed a little perfunctory. She knew now that he meant it. She really knew. She was embarrassed. She looked quickly down at his chest.
“I’ve got tears all over your shirt,” she said, laughing in shyness. “And I need to blow my nose.”
“You really are an asshole, you know,” said Des, embarrassed himself, as he reached for a Kleenex on the end table. “I can’t believe this scene. Now can we cut the crap and have some caviar? It is Christmas, after all.”
* * *
“Christ, this is embarrassing.”
Desmond Shaw was standing at his desk in his shirt sleeves, his top button unbuttoned, his tie askew, his sleeves rolled up. The journalist’s dishabille. No self-respecting journalist would ever think of sitting at his desk with a coat on or a tie neatly tied. Behind him the glass panes were frosted over so that it was difficult to see the lights from the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House. His office had the best view in town. Sometimes he just liked to sit at his desk in his black leather swivel chair and lean back and look at the view. It gave him such a sense of place. Most of the time he felt so hassled he could have
been working in Toledo for all the location mattered. It was only occasionally, when he was writing his column or something spectacularly newsworthy happened or the magazine had just been closed and he had opened up his little bar and poured a taste of Irish, that he got sentimental about Washington and the history and the moment of it all. Those times were fleeting and rare, but they kept him going. Even when he was most frustrated, even the times when he felt world-weary or just plain burned out he felt the exhilaration when he glanced out at the city below, watched the limousines with their flags careen in and out of the White House gates, saw the sun set over the Capitol building in the evening.
Tonight, however, was not one of those nights. It was Thursday night, and normally he would be there until midnight going over last-minute files, sending out for Chinese, arguing with New York to get his reporters’ stories in, taking queries, fighting over space, doing last-minute checks. He had rarely missed a Thursday night at the bureau. The staff counted on him. At any given moment there were two or three people in and out of his office, sticking their stories on his spike for him to read before they were telexed to New York. They counted on him to lobby for them with New York. They liked to shmooz, hang out, hash over stories and pool Periscope items. This would be the first Thursday night he had missed in a long time. And he was missing it because he was having dinner at the White House with the President and his wife upstairs in the family room. He had telephoned the editor of The Weekly that morning to tell him. Even though he had said he wasn’t going to. Gordo Franklin had been ecstatic. He was enough of a stargazer to be overjoyed at the news. He was always a little annoyed with Des anyway for his seeming lack of interest in playing the high-powered social game of Washington. Des was a dedicated player, but Gordo had no understanding whatsoever of Washington social life and had no way to distinguish between which kind of parties were important and which were not. He thought if there was a party covered by the press and it ended up in all the gossip columns filled with the names of the powerful, then it was an important party. That was often the mistake made by outsiders who didn’t realize it was the smaller private parties where the business was really conducted.
