Anyway, back to Mrs. Ford. Daddy used to complain that there hadn’t been a stylish woman in the White House since Jackie. But then Mrs. Ford went on a diet and slimmed down to a size six, and Daddy had been dropping hints that she might consider shopping at his store. And so, when that call came, he was thrilled, and naturally he decided to accompany his merchandise and show it to her personally.
The airline had been notified of the significance of this trip, because the cargo handlers needed to be alerted to the special nature of this big packing box. God forbid that any of the garments should arrive damaged by grappling hooks or even the slightest bit out of press. A Secret Service man had even helped supervise the packing, in case someone tried to slip a bomb into the yards and yards of pink tissue paper.
Why my father took me on this sales trip, I had no idea at the time. Later, I learned he had said, “I understand the Fords are a very family-oriented couple. So I think bringing Miranda along would be a nice touch—to show them I’m a family man.” Even then, my mother and I were being used as window dressing for Daddy’s store—not that I minded in the slightest.
Daddy was terribly excited, particularly since these were clothes that were to be worn in Paris. “We’ll show those French fashion snobs what American designers are all about!” he said.
I was excited too. All my classmates at Brearley were green with envy that I was going to the White House. So were my teachers. I was going to write a special report on my visit and deliver it in front of the entire school when I got back. Oh, I was Little Miss Important, believe me! I was even going to get to wear a little light lipstick, which was taboo in the fourth grade. My mother says being envied makes her feel sad. It didn’t make me sad. I loved it!
Beforehand, my mother tutored me carefully on how to greet the First Lady. “No curtsy, just a handshake and a nice smile. Remember, a smile is in the eyes, not the mouth. Just say, ‘How do you do, Mrs. Ford. How very nice of you to let me come.’ Then, while she looks at the garments, you just sit there, with your hands folded in your lap and your legs crossed at the ankle. Don’t speak to her unless she speaks to you, and if she should speak to you, answer as politely as possible. First impressions are most important, Miranda.”
Then my mother and I had a dress rehearsal for the visit, with Mother standing in for Betty Ford. “How do you do, Miranda,” Mother said.
“How do you do, Mrs. Ford. How very nice of you to let me come.”
My mother held an imaginary garment at her shoulders in front of an imaginary mirror, turning this way and that. “What do you think of this dress, Miranda?” she asked.
“I think you would look lovely in it, Mrs. Ford,” I said.
My mother clapped her hands. “Perfect!” she said.
And of course my mother selected my clothes with great care, rejecting outfit after outfit. “You must look like a Tarkington’s woman,” she said, though the store didn’t have a children’s department. Finally, she settled on a white cotton blouse with a yellow ribbon at the throat, a yellow pleated skirt with a matching bolero top, blue low-heeled shoes, and a yellow straw hat with a blue ribbon down the back. “A lady visiting the White House during the daytime should always be hatted,” she explained. “In the evening, never.” Where did she come up with these rules? I wondered. I’d never worn a hat before, and it was my first pair of pantyhose.
I modeled my White House clothes for her. “Oh, you look just like a little yellow tulip,” she said, clapping her hands again. “You’re really an awfully pretty little girl, you know.”
She’d never told me that before, and it impressed me. Come to think of it, she never told me again.
So my father and I sat beside each other in the first class section of the big plane. He didn’t seem to be nervous, but I knew he was, and I certainly was, at least a little. I concentrated on keeping my hands folded in my lap.
We’d been in the air for about ten minutes, and the seat belt sign had been turned off, when my father summoned the stewardess. I remember she was a young black woman with hair so shiny and pulled back so tightly across her head that it looked as though it had been painted on. It looked like trompe l’oeil hair. “I’d like to visit the captain in the cockpit,” my father said.
“I’m sorry, sir, but F.A.A. regulations do not permit passengers to visit the flight deck while the aircraft is in air operations,” she said.
My father reached in his pocket. “Please give the captain my card,” he said, and handed it to her.
“Certainly, sir.”
My father winked at me. “We’ll have some fun with her,” he whispered.
Well, she was back in a flash, all smiles, saying, “Mr. Tarkington, Captain Brown has invited you to join him for a few minutes on the flight deck. Is this your little girl? Perhaps she’d enjoy visiting the flight deck, too. Please follow me, sir.”
And so we went forward to the flight deck, where we met the captain, the first officer, and the flight engineer, who explained what the hundreds of little dials and knobs and buttons and switches on the control panel meant and how they worked. “We’re delighted to have you on board, Mr. Tarkington,” the captain said. “I’ve been assured that your cargo went on board intact and will receive priority care when we get to Washington National.”
“Now that my daughter has had her first flying lesson,” my father said, “perhaps she’d like to take over the controls of the aircraft for a few minutes. Would you like that, Miranda?”
Well, the captain looked a little nervous at this suggestion, but the next thing I knew he was unbuckling his seat belt and strapping me into the pilot’s seat.
Now, I’m quite sure I was not really flying the plane. But my hands were on the stick, or whatever it’s called, and it certainly felt as though I were flying it. I’m sure the first officer was fully in control of things, and the captain was right over my shoulder, in case I pushed a button that would send the plane into a nose dive or something. But there I was—in the captain’s seat!
Later, back in first class, my father said, “Well, what do you think of that, young lady? You were flying this seven-twenty-seven. That’ll be something to tell your friends at school, won’t it?”
“Yes!” I gasped. I’d already decided that this was going to be the highlight of the essay I was going to write for school. To heck with meeting the wife of the President of the United States!
At the airport gate, we were met by reporters and photographers. This was what Daddy called “trickle-down” publicity, and it was the kind he liked best. The store hadn’t needed to publicize this special White House visit. American Airlines had done it for them. The next morning, there would be stories with headlines like: FIFTH AVE. FASHION STORE COMES TO WHITE HOUSE VIA AMERICAN AIRLINES.
“No photographs of me, please,” my father said, holding up his hand and stepping to one side. “But you may photograph my daughter, Miranda.”
And so Little Miss Important posed at the door of the plane and, later, with the big carton of dresses as it was being carried out by four uniformed baggage handlers.
“Open up the carton!” one of the photographers said. “Let’s see the dresses!”
“Not until Mrs. Ford has made her choices,” I said, somehow knowing this was the right thing to say.
Everything that happened later on that trip seemed like an anticlimax to me, after flying the plane. My father and I were driven to the White House in a limousine, with another one following us with the dresses. We were ushered into the executive mansion and upstairs to the family’s private living quarters. I watched as Mrs. Ford examined seams and necklines. She’d had a mastectomy, I found out later, so nothing could be too low-cut or too short-sleeved, and my father had borne that in mind. She tried on a number of the dresses and ended up with four for evening and five for daytime, and she asked to keep one or two other pieces to decide on later.
“What do you think of this one, Miranda?” the First Lady asked me.
“I think you look lovely i
n it, Mrs. Ford,” I said, just as my mother had taught me.
After she’d made her selections, Mrs. Ford took us both on a short guided tour of the White House, including Lincoln’s bedroom. And at one point the President himself stepped into the room and introduced himself, and I shook his hand. As we left, my father and I were each given envelopes embossed with the White House crest, and in each was a signed photograph of the President and Mrs. Ford. Mine, which I still have, was inscribed To Miranda—fondly, Betty Ford.
Finally, before heading back to the airport, my father, who was just in the greatest mood, asked our driver to give me a quick tour of some of Washington’s most famous sights—the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the Capitol building, the Supreme Court building, the Smithsonian, and so on.
But nothing in Washington quite matched the thrill when I’d had the actual controls of an American Airlines jet right in my hands. Sometimes I wonder, What would the other passengers have thought if they’d known that their plane—for a few seconds—was in the hands of a fourth-grader from the Brearley School? To this day, the thought makes me smile. And what nine-year-old girl could fail to adore a magic father who, with the flip of a calling card, could manage to bring about miracles like that?
My mother, on the other hand, was not amused. “You are not to use that airplane story in your essay,” she said. “I will not allow it. That was a very foolish, childish thing your father did. The pilot could lose his license.”
Well, maybe that was part of it. But mostly I think my mother doesn’t like that story because it is about how my father liked to show off his power. She was always uncomfortable about the show-offy things he did, like Billings in his knee breeches and patent leather boots, and the mink lap robe in the back seat of the Rolls. Those show-offy things embarrassed her.
But the show-offy things she disliked were the things I loved most about him. To me, his store was a magic place, and he was the magician. Whenever the Magician comes up in the tarot pack I think of my father, the symbol of the power to translate ideas into action. To me, my father was the Wizard of Oz. Oh, I know the Wizard of Oz turns out to be a sham in the end, and maybe my father was a bit of a sham too. But even the sham wizard had his heart in the right place, and so did my father—most of the time, at least.
I don’t think I’ll ever really understand my mother. She always seems just a little bit too—well, too self-absorbed. She’s the only person I know who refuses to talk on the telephone in the morning until after she’s brushed and flossed her teeth—as though the person on the other end of the line might detect her morning breath. I’m sure she’s told you how hard she works for the annual hospital ball, and she does work hard, and it’s always a big fundraiser and a beautiful party. But it always seems to me that she works much harder on herself, maintaining her famous beauty.
Over the years, I’ve studied my mother’s face, both in photographs and in the flesh, and tried to pinpoint what her secret is. The flaws and imperfections of her face seem pretty obvious. Her lips are a little too thin, her nose a little too sharply aquiline, her jawline is a little too wide, and her chin is a little too pointy. But then there are those big blue eyes, those high cheekbones, that luminous skin, the pale hair, and that long Modigliani neck—and somehow all the disparate elements of her features come together as a kind of work of art.
Then there’s her posture; I think that has something to do with it. She’s tall—five-eight, taller than my father was—but there’s none of the awkwardness that’s often associated with tall women. She stands and sits perfectly, and there’s an almost catlike grace about the way she moves. The act of rising from a chair, for instance, which is perhaps the most difficult movement for a woman to perform gracefully, she seems to do like an act of levitation. She just seems to float upward. She can accomplish the same trick from a seated position on the floor, rising in a single, fast, fluid motion. “It’s all a question of balance—balance from the shoulders downward,” she once explained to me. “You have to think of your shoulders as being attached to your belly button.” Well I can’t think of my shoulders as being attached to my belly button! Watching her rise from a chair or come down a staircase, I sometimes think my mother could balance a lighted candle on the top of her head without spilling a drop of wax or causing the flame to flicker.
At fifty, she naturally pays a lot of attention to what she calls “my war paint.” But she’s so skillful at applying makeup that she seems to be wearing none at all, except lipstick to add fullness to her lips and, if you look closely, just the faintest trace of pale brown eyeshadow on her upper lids. This isn’t an easy look to achieve, believe me. It takes time and skill in front of that lighted four-way mirror on her dressing table. But there’s more to it than that. My mother works on her beauty even while she sleeps.
Here’s the way her daily routine goes, at least on weekdays when she’s in the city. Her day begins at eight in the morning when Margaret, her maid, taps on her bedroom door and comes in to open the curtains and place her breakfast tray beside her on the bed. The contents of this tray are always the same: a cup of plain yogurt, half a grapefruit, a coffee cup and a pot of black coffee, and the morning’s mail and newspapers. While Margaret arranges all the little lacy pillows behind Mother’s back and shoulders, Mother removes her sleep mask and unties the gauzy hair net that has kept her hair, in big rollers, in place for the night. A box of Kleenex and a bowl of cotton puffs are always placed beside her bed, and, while Margaret draws the bath in the room next door Mother removes the night creams from her face and throat, using many tissues. I once suggested to her that she should buy stock in Kimberly-Clark because she must be their biggest Kleenex customer.
Then, while Mother eats her grapefruit and sips her coffee—into which she spoons a dollop of yogurt—she and Margaret go over the menus for the day, if any meals are to be taken at home. If not, they’ll discuss the latest plot developments on Another World, a soap that Margaret watches every afternoon and that Mother enjoys hearing about vicariously.
Now the tub will be filled and bubbling with Guerlain salts and bath gel. Margaret disappears with the breakfast tray, and Mother slips out of her nightie, ties a towel, turban-style, about her hair in its rollers, and steps into the tub. She likes a long bath, and there are all sorts of little scrubs and sponges on the bath tray with special uses—for between her toes, behind her ears, for her face and breasts and underarms. At last she rises from the tub, wraps herself in an oversize bath towel, and steps to the washstand, where Margaret will have placed a bucket of ice cubes. Mother presses ice cubes all over her face and throat, then pats herself dry with more tissues. Then, using a French toothpaste that’s supposed to add pinkness to the gumline, she scrubs and flosses her teeth for exactly five minutes.
Then, changing to a dressing gown, she goes to her dressing table in the bedroom and sits down to apply her makeup, beginning with moisturizers for her face, arms, and hands. No one can do this for her. She must do it herself—outlining and filling in the lip gloss just so, patting her face with many tiny sponges and badger brushes. This takes another forty-five minutes or so.
By now, it is nine-thirty. The store won’t have opened yet, so this is the best time for a hairdresser to arrive from the salon downstairs to remove the rollers from Mother’s hair and give her a comb-out. When he finishes this, it will be ten o’clock.
Now, still in her dressing gown, she will go to her desk. Here she will glance briefly through the newspapers and open her mail.
At least another hour must be allowed for the next process, since Mother believes in answering every letter on the day that it’s received—in an almost illegible handwriting, I might add. Tommy Bonham, who’s an amateur graphologist, once joked that he couldn’t possibly analyze Mother’s handwriting—which is full of wild hooks and crazy downstrokes and little wedges for punctuation—because he couldn’t read what she had written. Mother says it doesn’t matter whether her letters
are legible or not. It’s the thought that counts. This hour is also spent making and receiving her morning telephone calls. Everyone who knows my mother knows she’s never available on the phone before 10 A.M.
By eleven o’clock, it’s time for her to go into her closets and select what she’ll wear for lunch. This also is a lengthy and complicated process. Every padded hanger in her closet is tagged and numbered and color-coded so that every garment there can be coordinated and accessorized with shoes, scarves, bags, jewelry. Also, there are elaborate charts showing which outfits she wore with which friends, at which occasions, and at which restaurants, so she will never be seen to duplicate herself. By twelve-fifteen, she’s ready to go downstairs, looking radiant and smelling of Shalimar, where Milliken will offer her a glass of chilled champagne de pêche, her only alcoholic beverage of the day. On the tray with the wine will be her vitamin, calcium, and iron pills. Mother insists that vitamins are much more effective when washed down with a bit of the bubbly. Milliken will receive his instructions for the balance of the day, and Billings will be outside with the car to drive her to lunch.
Okay, now cut to the chase. Lunch! This is the most important part of my mother’s day. This is when she does her so-called work. You’ve heard of the Ladies Who Lunch. My mother invented them, long before there was such a phrase. Her lunches are either with her various committee heads or with designers she’s trying to wangle out of goodies for party favors or door prizes or raffle prizes or silent-auction items or whatever. This latter part can’t be very hard to do, because all the designers want to be on Tarkington’s good side.
In any case, these lunches are always at least two-hour affairs. God knows what they talk about. Eating, incidentally, has nothing to do with it. My mother doesn’t really eat lunch—oh, maybe a couple of asparagus spears or a bit of grilled fish. And did I tell you that my mother always times her lunch dates so she arrives exactly five minutes late? That’s so she can make her entrance, which is so important!
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