After the Tall Timber

by Renata Adler

  Liddy was pale and rather haggard. For two days he had been unable to eat solid food, on account of a cracked and infected molar. Frances Liddy was tidying up a room off the kitchen, which, piled with magazines, books, and newspapers, serves as a combination study and auxiliary living room. Raymond drove off in the Ford to get mustard and mayonnaise for the sandwiches that his mother intended to serve at lunch. The household had gotten up relatively late that morning. Liddy had been scheduled, early on the previous evening, to appear on a radio show, Buchanan and Braden—Patrick Buchanan, the Republican columnist and former speechwriter for President Nixon; Thomas Braden, the Democratic columnist and friend of the Kennedys, more recently author of Eight Is Enough. The two-hour radio program had been such a success—although one woman had called in to say, “The thought of a man like you working in the White House simply makes me want to scream”—and Braden, Buchanan, and Liddy had found themselves in agreement on so many issues, particularly the proper conduct of American foreign policy, that the interviewers had invited Liddy to appear on their television program later that night. They kept him so long on the TV show that their scheduled guest, former ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon, had complained and threatened to leave. After the program, Frances Liddy had stayed up in order to complete the family’s tax returns, which were more than usually complicated this year, because of the book.

  For the past ten years, Frances Liddy, who holds a master’s degree in education, has been teaching in downtown Washington, at an elementary school which is almost completely black. “This time of year,” she said, pausing to sit down and have a cigarette, “teachers are tired. Children don’t sit still; they become hyperactive. Not just in urban schools. Everywhere. They don’t read, nobody reads to them. They don’t even play house anymore. There isn’t the imagination. Except when they’re watching television, they don’t sit still.” She was tired, too, she said, because the past few weeks, when the book and the Time excerpts were being edited, had been a strain. “Imagine if Time had leaked,” she said, “and here we are, a family known for our silence.” She laughed. She had read each chapter of the book, she said, as her husband wrote it. “I thought, Now people will know what I’ve gone through all these years.” Then she added, “It’s very strange to read it, and realize it’s your whole life.”

  Raymond returned from his errand. His mother put out her cigarette, and started to make sandwiches on a sideboard between the kitchen and the auxiliary living room study. A cab drew up. Sandy, looking like any attractive, well-educated young woman returning from college, walked into the kitchen. “I need money,” she said, meaning to pay for the taxi. “Everybody always does,” her mother said. When the cab had been paid, Sandy began to help with the preparations for lunch. “I have to be back at school tonight,” she said; also, “I’m starving.” Frances expressed approval of her daughter’s peach-colored suit, then remarked that she was not wearing panty hose. “It’s summer, Mom, you don’t have to wear them,” Sandy said. “That’s not my understanding,” her mother said.

  They both sat down, Frances to smoke another cigarette, Sandy to eat her sandwich. Sandy abruptly mentioned the Time excerpts. “I’ve never been so shocked in my life,” she said. “I haven’t read the book. I don’t know what else is in there. We never even had time to sit down and discuss it as a family.” Her mother said nothing. “Somebody actually walked up to me on campus and said, ‘Are you as crazy as your father?’ ” Sandy said. Then, with her version of the Liddy twinkle, “I said, ‘Yeah, and you better watch out.’ ”

  Ms. Crawford and the photographer arrived, together with Pam Mason, an undergraduate at Dartmouth, who was spending the year in a “journalism internship” at People. The three went with Liddy and Raymond to the main, larger living room, where there was a piano. “We’re still two children short,” Frances said. Phrases drifted through the open door, reminiscences of the forties, “piano lessons,” “recital,” “largo,” “Master Liddy will now play ‘Largo.’ ” Mother and daughter talked a while longer, in the living room/study. A limousine drove up, delivering Jim. “Why does he get a limousine,” Sandy said, laughing, “and I get just a taxi?” She finished her sandwich. Jim walked in. “Go and say hello to your father,” Frances Liddy said.

  The phone rang. “Raymond,” Frances said. “I think it’s Mrs. Tower.” Senator John Tower’s wife was calling to inquire about Raymond’s lawn mowing. While Liddy was still in prison, all the children took up various jobs. Sandy, for instance, earned her first year’s college tuition by driving a city bus at night. Tom, at the same time, talked his way into St. Albans, Washington’s finest private school, under a special program for minorities and foreign indigents. The front door banged. “Thomas has arrived,” Frances said. “Tom has arrived?” Liddy’s voice asked from the next room. “Tom has arrived, in his usual splendor. With his laundry bag. Don’t you have a clean shirt? And, Tom, your hair. It’s all right. Just go and get a clean shirt.” “I have a laundry bag full of dirty shirts,” Tom said. He had just come from the final rehearsal for the St. Albans production of The Boys from Syracuse, in which he played a starring role. He was wearing tattered army pants, a shirt, sneakers. “No. Go and take one of your father’s shirts,” his mother said. Mild protests. “Thomas, your mother says you’re not wearing a clean shirt,” Liddy said, amused, “and that your hair looks like a mare’s nest. Go and take one of my shirts.” “You know, you’ll never get it back,” Tom said, starting up the stairs. “I know I’ll never get it back,” his father said.

  The People photographer began to wander around, looking for a place to set his tripod. “I don’t know just what I want yet,” he said. “Anything on this floor,” Liddy said. “Evidently the second floor is off-limits.” The reporter and Pam Mason were in the main living room, interviewing Liddy children. Was there anything they had found odd, as they were growing up, about their father? No. Anything eccentric? Again no. Raymond wandered into the kitchen, and poured himself something that appeared to be chocolate milk from a pitcher on the sideboard. “What’s this?” he asked, before taking a sip. “It’s poison,” Frances Liddy said. “Your mother, of course, is trying to poison you.” Raymond drank his chocolate milk.

  Only one of the children, Grace, who was apparently in her room upstairs, had not joined the group talking with the reporter. “Do you think you could get Grace to come and sit with us?” her father asked. “Let’s get Grace to come down and join us.” One of the children started up the stairs. “Be diplomatic now,” their mother said. Grace came down and sat with the others. There was laughter, anecdotes. In answer to a question, Liddy mentioned his pride in each of his children. “Of course, I was away during most of their formative years,” he said. He went upstairs to get some medication for his tooth. Had their father never embarrassed them? the reporter resumed at once. No, he hadn’t. Did the children have habits of which their parents disapproved? Drinking? Marijuana? No. The children, trying obviously to oblige, took up any line of conversation that did not reflect badly on their father or the family.

  In the living room study, Frances Liddy had another cigarette, and spoke of her often-disappointed hope that one of the pregnant cats, a calico, would this time produce a calico male. Jim walked in, and began to explain the aloofness of the dog, Hounddog. The hound had strayed into the Liddy yard several years ago, “when Pop was in prison.” “We already had two dogs,” Jim said. “Hounddog was very shy, very scared. He stayed around because of the other dogs, I think. He would play with them just out of our reach. Finally, we could pet him, then we took the ticks off him. He didn’t like it much. Whenever we would touch him, he was shaking and jumping. Pop would always ask about our progress with Hounddog. Then the other two dogs died.” One was poisoned. The other was hit by a car. “So of the three dogs we had,” Jim said, “the stray is left.”

  Liddy came in with the photographer, talking of cameras. “You know, a lot of situations I find I cannot use a flash,” Liddy s
aid. “I hate a flash,” the photographer said; then, “I still don’t know just what I want.” Liddy asked whether anyone would like coffee. The photographer would. “Can you make me a cup?” Frances asked. Liddy made coffee and passed the cups around. “See, somebody loves me after all,” Frances said. The photographer went back, with Liddy and Jim, to the room where the other children were still being interviewed.

  “When he was away, the family just had to unify,” Frances said. “Everybody learned to cook. Many days, after teaching school, I thought I would never survive. But the children would say, ‘Now, Mother.’ They were between nine and fourteen. I thought, Either he’s going to be released, or he’s not going to be released. We have to give it every chance. And I got them swimming. In swimming, there isn’t any fussiness about male or female. Most coaches are good strong men kids can look up to. It’s not like those other sports, ice hockey, the Little League, which are so competitive, where you have children straining muscles they should not; and where you have fathers, mothers and fathers, who haven’t accomplished anything since seventh grade, living through their nine-year-olds. In swimming, you don’t have that. It’s a good clean sport. It took up a lot of their energy, it was good for their bodies, the environment was healthy. So I thought, I’d better get those boys in the water and keep them out of trouble. The older children made meals, when we came home at nine o’clock at night. Weekends, I would cook like mad. Some days I was so worn out I thought there was no way I could have driven them one more day. Then, they started to get old enough to drive. I thought, I’ve just got to work to get him out. Because one night it dawned on me, These children were going to be grown up and gone by the time he got out.

  “So I worked to get him out. There were committees, George C. Higgins was a godsend, television appearances. I used to say, ‘Did you watch me? Did you see your mother on television?’ They need their privacy at that age. They had usually watched Saturday Night Live. But we kept the ties going. And they had to be kept. Gordon is very much a family man. He’s always been so interested in his children. They all have their individuality. I encourage that, I guess, because I was an only child. To raise them as individuals. But we talk about everything. Now, we’re both running to make up for the upset, because their lives of course were not normal in those years.” She paused. “When he’s an old man, they will come,” she said. “Pretty soon, there’ll already be another”—she hesitated—“facet to their view of him. And in five years, they’ll see another facet. And when they’re thirty, another.” Pause. “You work on that, when you build a family. When he is an old man, they will come.”

  Everyone took a break, and adjourned to the sideboard for lunch. Jim, who would go to Fordham in the fall, and Tom, who had not decided on a college yet, questioned Pam Mason earnestly about Dartmouth. Sandy talked about what she called a major issue in medicine: tension between doctors and nurses. Nurses increasingly competent and well-trained, doctors, ever more diffident, frightened of malpractice suits, and unwilling to acknowledge the increased responsibility of nurses. She mentioned an old patient at the hospital where she works at night, and the efforts by nurses, over a period of weeks, to get doctors to pay attention to his bed sores. Finally, a young doctor had operated on the old man, without anesthetic, right there on the ward. “You’d think they would listen to the nurses sooner,” she said, “or at least show some compassion until God took him away.”

  The photographer, meanwhile, had decided what he wanted. “Mr. Liddy,” he said, “would you just hold your hand over a flame for me?” Liddy declined. In that case, would Liddy put on a ring with jagged edges, honed as a weapon when Liddy was in prison, and make a fist? “I just need one zinger picture,” the photographer said. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the magazine operates.” In the end, Liddy put on the ring, but declined to make a threatening gesture. The photographer took some pictures of him, and of the whole family standing in the yard. “You got what you wanted,” Liddy said as he was taking off the ring, “and I didn’t get what I didn’t want.” The following week, People ran a piece several pages long. Lacking a photograph with a flame, however, it was not a cover story.

  At 6 A.M. on Monday, a few people sat, with their early morning pallor, coughs, expressionless faces, in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria. Some were reading newspapers. A young woman was reading a paperback, De Votre Inconscient. All seemed waiting for diverse errands and appointments. A huge Seiko map high up on one wall flashed the time in various time zones of the world. Little black billboards with white plastic letters announced meetings scheduled to take place in the hotel that day: the National Association of Manufacturers, the New York City Central Labor Council, Descente America, Inc., Young & Rubicam, the Knights of Malta. At 6:15 A.M., two maintenance men, one black, one white, carried the hotel’s large American flag to the Lexington Avenue entrance, where they unrolled and raised it. At 6:25, the Muzak went on; at 6:30, the lobby chandeliers, and the lights in the men’s and ladies’ rooms. At 6:45, a limousine rented by St. Martin’s Press drew up at the Park Avenue entrance. Danny, the driver, and Mindy, a young publicity assistant at St. Martin’s Press, met Liddy just inside the hotel door. Liddy was scheduled that day for eight radio and television interviews. In the course of the morning, Mindy and a reporter persuaded the St. Martin’s publicity department to cancel two interviews. They took Liddy to a dentist. By that time, three interviews had already passed.

  As the limousine set out along Park Avenue, Mindy gave Liddy an envelope containing money for expenses on his trip. “I haven’t seen that kind of money since I was giving it to the Cubans,” Liddy said. Mindy remarked how “refreshing” it was to have an author who carefully accounted for what he spent in cash. At the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifty-second Street, a car ran into the limousine and crumpled the front fender. Danny and the driver of the car got out. A little contretemps ensued. A police car arrived. Liddy recalled a night in early 1973, when a car had crashed into his jeep. The damage had not been serious. But the driver of the other car, a retired general, who was slightly drunk, had been outraged. “He kept saying, ‘Citizen’s arrest! I hold you in a citizen’s arrest,’ ” Liddy recalled. “I said, ‘No need for this citizen’s arrest stuff. Let’s wait for the State Police.’ He said, ‘Citizen’s arrest! Do you realize you could get thirty days for this?’ I said, ‘It’s okay. I’ve already got twenty-one years.’ He said, ‘My God, are you him?’ ”

  “Mr. Liddy, we live under a rule of law in this country,” Shelley Henrye began, on the Shelley Henrye radio show, and the interview took a not unfamiliar course. When the listener phone calls started coming in (“Did you know anything about the Kennedy assassination before it happened?”), they were not unfamiliar, either. At a console, separated by a glass panel from Liddy and Ms. Henrye, a young man was fielding calls. The whole switchboard remained lit up. “I’m sorry, I can’t take your question,” he said. “Good question. Please hang on and we’ll get to you”; “I’m gonna take you first. Will you turn your radio down. Okay, gottcha”; “Uh-huh, so what’s your question? Well, tell me, because it makes a difference”; “Good. There’s a question he can answer in spades”; “I’m sorry. During the commercial break I asked him that question and he said he had nothing to say about it”; “All right. Be as brief as you can because we’re running against the clock.” Then, a caller who identified himself as Dick Tuck was on the air. Liddy greeted the man Democrats thought of as their merry prankster of the 1968 and 1972 campaigns, with real delight. He saluted him as a practitioner of “world-class dirty tricks,” “when we were on the other side of the fence.” Tuck laughed. “A prison fence?” he asked. Liddy laughed. “Not anymore,” he said.

  After Liddy’s session at the dentist’s, an interviewer at the UPI radio station said, in welcome, “I expected your eyes to be blue.” He asked whether Liddy would like coffee or lunch. Liddy asked for yogurt, on account of his tooth. A little refrigerator, in the rather shabby office
, turned out to contain five flavors of yogurt. The interviewer asked whether they might begin to tape at once. Liddy asked whether he might eat his yogurt while they talked. “Sure,” the interviewer said. “This isn’t NBC. This is UPI. Just don’t slurp on the microphone.” Then, they talked, of “morality or ethics, and the rule of reason,” of “free will versus individual responsibility.” “What’s your highest value?” the interviewer asked. “Country, family,” Liddy said, then more softly, “friends.” When Liddy emerged from the radio station, the limousine stood empty at the curb. Danny, who had been sent to fill a prescription made out by the dentist, had apparently vanished. So had Mindy. When they came back, it turned out that Mindy had been making phone calls. Danny, in addition to filling the prescription, had bought a copy of Liddy’s book.

  On News Center 4, as Liddy appeared in the studio, Tom Snyder, the host, was interviewing Irving Schiff, the New Haven “tax refusenik,” who, on what he says are constitutional and other grounds, has paid “not one dime in income taxes since 1973.” “That’s kind of a dangerous thing,” Snyder said. Schiff reminded him that the American Revolution was provoked by “taxation without representation.” He started to give five reasons not to pay income taxes. “One, it’s patriotic. Two, it will improve your social life, talking about it. Three, if I were to pay my taxes the government would merely waste more money.” He spoke of the “subterranean underground” of people who conduct their transactions in cash, to avoid records for tax purposes. He spoke of the fake “churches, trusts, and charitable clubs” being formed to avoid paying taxes for “the Disneyland on the Potomac.” “People are dropping out in droves,” he said. Next, Snyder interviewed the actress who played the heroine, Joanna Tate, on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, which had run for twenty-seven years. “It’s not everyday life,” the actress said, of the program. “That would be boring.” Commercials. An announcement that an interview with Liddy was coming up. “First, we’re going to cook,” a television chef said, and made an omelette. Commercials. Then, Tom Snyder said, by way of introduction, “Today, Gordon Liddy is not afraid of anything.”