by Joan Didion
I said that Jack Lovett was one of those men for whom information was an end in itself.
He was also a man for whom the accidental did not figure.
Many people are intolerant of the accidental, but this was something more: Jack Lovett did not believe that accidents happen. In Jack Lovett’s system all behavior was purposeful, and the purpose could be divined by whoever attracted the best information and read it most correctly. A Laotian village indicated on one map and omitted on another suggested not a reconnaissance oversight but a population annihilated, x number of men, women, and children lined up one morning between the maps and bulldozed into a common ditch. A shipment of laser mirrors from Long Beach to a firm in Hong Kong that did no laser work suggested not a wrong invoice but transshipment, re-export, the diversion of technology to unfriendly actors. All nations, to Jack Lovett, were “actors,” specifically “state actors” (“non-state actors” were the real wild cards here, but in Jack Lovett’s extensive experience the average non-state actor was less interested in laser mirrors than in M-16s, AK-47s, FN-FALs, the everyday implements of short-view power, and when the inductive leap to the long view was made it would probably be straight to weapons-grade uranium), and he viewed such actors abstractly, as friendly or unfriendly, committed or uncommitted; as assemblies of armaments on a large board. Asia was ten thousand tanks here, three hundred Phantoms there. The heart of Africa was an enrichment facility.
5
THE woman to whom Jack Lovett was married from 1945 until 1952 described his occupation, whenever during the course of their marriage she applied for a charge account or filled out the forms for a new gynecologist or telephone or gas connection, as “army officer.” In fact Carla Lovett made a convincing army wife, a druggist’s daughter from San Jose who was comfortable shopping at the commissary and spending large parts of her day at the officers’ club swimming pool, indifferent to her surroundings, passive in bad climates. Fort Hood and Georgetown and Manila and Schofield Barracks were the same to Carla Lovett, particularly after a drink or two.
The woman to whom Jack Lovett was married from 1962 until 1964 was a Honolulu divorcee named Betty Bennett, a woman who lived only a few doors from Janet and Dick Ziegler on Kahala beach and with whom Janet Ziegler occasionally played bridge and discussed shopping trips to the mainland. Betty Bennett had received the Kahala house as part of the settlement from her first husband, and continued to live in it during and after her marriage to Jack Lovett, an eighteen-month crossed connection that left little impression on either of them. When Betty Bennett filed for her divorce from Jack Lovett (I say “her” divorce reflexively, I suppose because Betty Bennett was a woman who applied the possessive pronoun reflexively, as in “my house,” “my 450-SL,” “my wedding lunch”) she described his occupation as “aircraft executive.” According to Jack Lovett’s visa applications in 1975 he was a businessman. According to Jack Lovett’s business cards in 1975 he was a consultant in international development.
According to Jack Lovett himself he was someone who had “various irons in the fire.”
Someone who kept “the usual balls in the air.”
Someone who did “a little business here and there.”
Someone who did what he could.
Anyone who did any reporting at all during the middle and late sixties and early seventies was apt to have run into Jack Lovett. He was a good contact. He knew a lot of things. After I finished my first novel and left Vogue and started reporting I actually ran into him quite a bit, most often in Honolulu but occasionally in one or another transit lounge or American embassy, and perhaps because he identified me as a friend of Inez Victor’s he seemed to exempt me from his instinctive distrust of reporters. I am not saying that he ever told me anything he did not want me to know. I am saying only that we talked, and once in a while we even talked about Inez Victor. I recall one such conversation in 1971 in Honolulu and another in 1973, on a Garuda 727 that had jammed its landing gear and was in the process of dumping its fuel over the South China Sea. Jack Lovett told me for example that he considered Inez “one of the most noble” women he had ever met. I remember this specifically because the word “noble” seemed from another era, and as such surprising, and mildly amusing.
He never told me exactly what it was he did, nor would I have asked. Exactly what Jack Lovett did was tacitly understood by most people who knew him, but not discussed. Had he been listed in Who’s Who, which he was not, even the most casual reader of his entry could have pieced together a certain pattern, discerned the traces of what intelligence people call “interest.” Such an entry would have revealed odd overlapping dates, unusual posts at unusual times. There would have been the assignment to Vientiane, the missions to Haiti, Quebec, Rawalpindi. There would have been the associations with companies providing air courier service, air cargo service, aircraft parts; companies with telephone numbers that began “800” and addresses that were post-office boxes in Miami, Honolulu, Palo Alto. There would have been blank spots. The military career would have seemed erratic, off track.
Finally, such an entry would have been starred, indicating that the subject had supplied no information, for Jack Lovett supplied information only when he saw the chance, however remote, of getting information in return. When he registered at a hotel he gave as his address one or another of those post-office boxes in Miami, Honolulu, Palo Alto. The apartment he kept in Honolulu, a one-bedroom rental near Ala Moana in a building inhabited mostly by call girls, was leased in the name “Mid-Pacific Development.” It was possible to see this tendency to obscure even the most inconsequential information as a professional reflex, but it was also possible to see it as something more basic, a temperamental secretiveness, a reticence that had not so much derived from Jack Lovett’s occupation as led him to it. I recall a story I heard in 1973 or 1974 from a UPI photographer who had run into Jack Lovett in a Hong Kong restaurant, an upstairs place in the Wanchai district where the customers kept their bottles in a cupboard above the cash register. Jack Lovett’s bottle was on his table, a quart of Johnnie Walker Black, but the name taped on the label, in his own handwriting, was “J. LOCKHART.” “You don’t want your name on too many bottles around town,” Jack Lovett reportedly said when the photographer mentioned the tape on the label. This was a man who for more than twenty years had maintained a grave attraction to a woman whose every move was photographed.
In this context I always see Inez Victor as she looked on a piece of WNBC film showing a party on the St. Regis Roof given by the governor of New York; some kind of afternoon party, a wedding or a christening or an anniversary, nominally private but heavily covered by the press. On this piece of film, which was made and first shown on March 18, 1975, one week exactly before Paul Christian fired the shots that set this series of events in motion, Inez Victor can be seen dancing with Harry Victor. She is wearing a navy-blue silk dress and a shiny dark straw hat with red cherries. “Marvelous,” she is heard to say repeatedly on the clip.
“Marvelous day.”
“You look marvelous.”
“Marvelous to be here.”
“Clear space for the senator,” a young man in a dark suit and a rep tie keeps saying. There are several such young men in the background, all carrying clipboards. This one seems only marginally aware of Inez Victor, and his clipboard collides a number of times with her quilted shoulder bag. “Senator Victor is here as the governor’s guest, give him some room please.”
“—Taking a more active role,” a young woman with a microphone repeats.
“—Senator here as the governor’s guest, please no interviews, that’s all, that’s it, hold it.”
The band segues into “Isn’t It Romantic.”
“Hold two elevators,” another of the young men says.
“I’m just a private citizen,” Harry Victor says.
“Marvelous,” Inez Victor says.
I first saw this clip not when it was first shown but some months later, at the time Jac
k Lovett was in the news, when, for the two or three days it took the story of their connection to develop and play out, Inez Victor could be seen dancing on the St. Regis Roof perhaps half a dozen times between five P.M. and midnight.
6
LET me establish Inez Victor.
Born, as you know, Inez Christian in the Territory of Hawaii on the first day of January, 1935.
Known locally as Dwight Christian’s niece.
Cissy Christian’s granddaughter.
Paul Christian’s daughter, of course, but Paul Christian was usually in Cuernavaca or Tangier or sailing a 12.9-meter Trintella-class ketch through the Marquesas and did not get mentioned as often as his mother and his brother. Carol Christian’s daughter as well, but Carol Christian had materialized from the mainland and vanished back to the mainland, a kind of famous story in that part of the world, a novel in her own right, but not the one I have in mind.
Harry Victor’s wife.
Oh shit, Inez, Jack Lovett said.
Harry Victor’s wife.
He said it on the late March evening in 1975 when he and Inez sat in an empty off-limits bar across the bridge from Schofield Barracks and watched the evacuation on television of one or another capital in Southeast Asia. Conflicting reports, the anchorman said. Rapidly deteriorating situation. Scenes of panic and confusion. Down the tubes, the bartender said. Bye-bye Da Nang. On the screen above the bar the helicopter lifted again and again off the roof of the American mission and Jack Lovett watched without speaking and after a while he asked the bartender to turn off the sound and plug in the jukebox. No dancing, the bartender said. I’m already off fucking limits. You’re not off limits from dancing, Jack Lovett said. You’re off from fencing Sansui amps to an undercover. The bartender turned down the sound and plugged in the jukebox. Jack Lovett said nothing to Inez, only looked at her for a long time and then stood up and took her hand.
The Mamas and the Papas sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
The helicopter lifted again off the roof of the American mission.
In this bar across the bridge from Schofield Barracks Inez did not say “marvelous” as she danced. She did not say “marvelous day” as she danced. She did not say “you look marvelous,” or “marvelous to be here.” She did not say anything at all as she danced, did not even dance as you or I or the agency that regulated dancing in bars might have defined dancing. She only stood with her back against the jukebox and her arms around Jack Lovett. Her hair was loose and tangled from the drive out to Schofield and the graying streak at her left temple, the streak she usually brushed under, was exposed. Her eyes were closed against the flicker from the television screen.
“Fucking Arvin finally shooting each other,” the bartender said.
“Oh shit, Inez,” Jack Lovett said. “Harry Victor’s wife.”
7
BY the spring of 1975 Inez Victor had in fact been Harry Victor’s wife for twenty years.
Through Harry Victor’s two years with the Justice Department, through the appearance in The New York Times Magazine of “Justice for Whom?—A Young Lawyer Wants Out,” by Harry Victor and R.W. Dillon.
Through the Neighborhood Legal Coalition that Harry Victor and Billy Dillon organized out of the storefront in East Harlem. Through the publication of The View from the Street: Root Causes, Radical Solutions and a Modest Proposal, by Harry Victor, Based on Studies Conducted by Harry Victor with R.W. Dillon.
Through the marches in Mississippi and in the San Joaquin Valley, through Harry Victor’s successful campaigns for Congress in 1964 and 1966 and 1968, through the sit-ins at Harvard and at the Pentagon and at Dow Chemical plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Through Harry Victor’s appointment in 1969 to fill out the last three years of a Senate term left vacant by the death of the incumbent.
Through Connie Willis and through Frances Landau (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, behave, girls like that come with the life,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about Connie Willis and Frances Landau), through the major fundraising in California (“Inez, I’m asking you nice, put on your tap shoes, it’s big green on the barrelhead,” Billy Dillon said to Inez about California), through the speaking tours and the ad hoc committees and the fact-finding missions to Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh; through the failed bid for a presidential nomination in 1972 and through the mistimed angling for a good embassy (this was one occasion when Jakarta and Santiago and Managua and Phnom Penh did not spring to Harry Victor’s lips) that occurred in the wreckage of that campaign.
Through the mill.
Through the wars.
Through the final run to daylight: through the maneuvering of all the above elements into a safe place on the field, into a score, into that amorphous but inspired convergence of rhetoric and celebrity known as the Alliance for Democratic Institutions.
Inez Victor had been there.
Because Inez Victor had been there many people believed that they knew her: not “most” people, since the demographics of Harry Victor’s phantom constituency were based on comfort and its concomitant uneasiness, but most people of a type, most people who read certain newspapers and bought certain magazines, most people who knew what kind of girls came with the life, most people who knew where there was big green on the barrelhead, most people who were apt to have noticed Inez buying printed sheets on sale in Bloomingdale’s basement or picking up stemmed strawberries at Gristede’s or waiting for one of her and Harry Victor’s twin children, the girl Jessie or the boy Adlai, in front of the Dalton School.
These were people who all knew exactly what Inez Victor did with the stemmed strawberries she picked up at Gristede’s (passed them in a silver bowl at her famous New Year’s Eve parties on Central Park West, according to Vogue); what Inez Victor did with the printed sheets she bought on sale in Bloomingdale’s basement (cut them into round tablecloths for her famous Fourth of July parties in Amagansett, according to W); and what Inez Victor had paid for the Ungaro khaki shirtwaists she wore during the 1968 convention, the 1968 Chicago convention during which Harry Victor was photographed for Life getting tear-gassed in Grant Park.
These were people who all knew someone who knew someone who knew that on the night in 1972 when Harry Victor conceded the California primary before the polls closed Inez Victor flew back to New York on the press plane and sang “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” with an ABC cameraman and the photographer from Rolling Stone.
These people had all seen Inez, via telephoto lens, drying Jessie’s fine blond hair by the swimming pool at the house in Amagansett. These people had all seen Inez, in the Daily News, leaving Lenox Hill Hospital with Adlai on the occasion of his first automobile accident. These people had all seen photograph after photograph of the studied clutter in the library of the apartment on Central Park West, the Canton jars packed with marking pencils, the stacks of Le Monde and Foreign Affairs and The Harvard Business Review, the legal pads, the several telephones, the framed snapshots of Harry Victor eating barbecue with Eleanor Roosevelt and of Harry Victor crossing a police line with Coretta King and of Harry Victor playing on the beach at Amagansett with Jessie and with Adlai and with Frances Landau’s Russian wolfhound.
These people had taken their toll.
By which I mean to suggest that Inez Victor had come to view most occasions as photo opportunities.
By which I mean to suggest that Inez Victor had developed certain mannerisms peculiar to people in the public eye: a way of fixing her gaze in the middle distance, a habit of smoothing her face in repose by pressing up on her temples with her middle fingers; a noticeably frequent blink, as if the photographers’ strobes had triggered a continuing flash on her retina.
By which I mean to suggest that Inez Victor had lost certain details.
I recall being present one morning in a suite in the Hotel Doral in Miami, amid the debris of Harry Victor’s 1972 campaign for the nomination, when a feature writer from the Associated Press asked I
nez what she believed to be the “major cost” of public life.
“Memory, mainly,” Inez said.
“Memory,” the woman from the Associated Press repeated.
“Memory, yes. Is what I would call the major cost. Definitely.” The suite in the Doral that morning was a set being struck. On a sofa that two workmen were pushing back against a wall Billy Dillon was trying to talk on the telephone. In the foyer a sound man from one of the networks was packing up equipment left the night before. “I believe I can speak for Inez when I say that we’re looking forward to a period of being just plain Mr. and Mrs. Victor,” Harry had said the night before on all three networks. Inez stood up now and began looking for a clean ashtray on a room-service table covered with half-filled glasses. “Something like shock treatment,” she added.
“You mean you’ve had shock treatment.”
“No. I mean you lose track. As if you’d had shock treatment.”
“I see. ‘Lose track’ of what exactly?”
“Of what happened.”
“I see.”
“Of what you said. And didn’t say.”
“I see. Yes. During the campaign.”
“Well, no. During your—” Inez looked at me for help. I pretended to be absorbed in the Miami Herald. Inez emptied a dirty ashtray into the lid of a film can and sat down again. “During your whole life.”
“You mentioned shock treatment. You haven’t personally—”
“I said no. Didn’t I say no? I said ‘as if.’ I said ‘something like.’ I meant you drop fuel. You jettison cargo. Eject the crew. You lose track.”
