by Mo Rocca
A momentary hush came over the crowd when Walter Cronkite rose and pronounced Laurie a credit to the profession and congratulated her on being named Entertainment Weekly’s Presidential Dog “It Girl.”
Through it all a doddering Liz Smith sat in the corner scribbling down celebrity names for her next column. “Does anyone know how to spell Lainie Kazan?” she muttered to no one in particular.
Things were a little raunchier in back where pudgy FCC overlord Michael Powell was receiving a lap dance from Courtney Love. It was hard not to be distracted by the jiggling of his own man breasts. (At least he was wearing pasties.) Conservative pitbull Sean Hannity looked on intensely as liberal Alan Colmes fidgeted nervously.
I downed one tumbler of Scotch as fast as I could, then another. Before I got too buzzed I realized my stomach was empty so I made my way over to the buffet table. I hadn’t been eating well lately so I fixed myself a salad.
Beside the buffet table sat a spruced-up kennel with five dogs in it, the only nod to the purported subject of Laurie’s book. They were each dressed up as different Presidents. They looked sad. No doubt Laurie and many of the guests here were pet owners. But these defenseless creatures were being ignored, relegated to props in Fox News’s transparent bid to show how all-American they were.
A beagle dressed as Washington was particularly compelling. He fixed his eyes on me and I couldn’t resist moving closer.
“Hey there, boy, how ya doin’?” I said.
“A Salad Mincer,” he said.
The dog talked. It wasn’t the Scotch talking. I’d only been drinking for about twenty minutes.
“What?” I said stupidly.
“Oh, you guys are BAAAAAAAD!” I turned to see ultra–right wing and ex–MSNBC talk show host Michael Savage, a dangerously teetering Cosmo in hand, being propped up by the rest of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast. Michael was the brand-new Fashion Guy, a promotions stunt that had added some oomph to the show’s flagging ratings. (The original Fashion Guy, Carson Kressley, was booted off the show after his wife and two kids stepped forward and demanded that he stop living a lie and return to his native West Virginia.) The New Fab Five were coming toward me.
I turned back to the beagle. He was sniffing the dachshund’s ass now. “What did you say?” I asked again.
“I said, ‘You guys are B-A-D, BAAAAAAAAD!’ ” Michael leaned up against the kennel. “Hiya, sailor, have you met Ted, Jai, Thom, and . . .”
“Kyan,” said the Hair Guy, clearly losing his patience.
“All of youse, don’t be so baaaaad,” slurred Michael. “So what’s your name?”
The last thing I wanted to do was get acquainted with Michael Savage. A beagle had just spoken to me.
Before I could shake him, though, the kennel was being wheeled out by two workmen. “Where are the dogs going?” I asked a young woman who seemed to be in charge.
“Back to the agency. They’re rentals,” she said. Just as the kennel was disappearing through the double doors leading out to the loading dock, though, the beagle slipped out and darted ahead. No one else seemed to notice.
“Wait!” I shouted and ran out through the doors.
Out on the loading docks, the young woman was taking notes on the animals. “Okay, you’re good to go,” she said to the workmen.
“No, you’re not. You just lost a dog,” I huffed.
She looked at me blankly. “We came with four. We’re leaving with four.”
“But the beagle. You’re leaving him behind. You can’t just—”
“Sir, there was no beagle,” she said.
“But I know I saw—”
“You heard the lady,” said a vaguely Germanic monotone voice. “There was no beagle.” I turned to see Gephardt the Albino staring down at me. My blood was chilled.
8
The Lair Down There
All night long I thought about what the beagle had said to me. “A Salad Mincer.” Was this some sort of anagram? Anagrams were a passion of mine so I instantly decoded the beagle’s message as an anagram for, among other things, “A Carnal Deism” and “A Manacled Sir.” But they didn’t seem to mean anything.
The next day’s White House press briefing was relatively quick. My question was also much more concise: “Mr. Secretary, Andrew Johnson left scraps of cheese for the mice that lived in the White House during his term.” True indeed. “Is the President concerned that Wisconsin’s economic troubles may put that swing state firmly in the Democrats’ column?” I must say it was a crafty way of asking a current-events question in the guise of my beat, and this time no one laughed. Granted, most everyone was hungover, including Scott, who had shown up at the party after I had left.
“No I don’t think so . . . well, maybe . . . Whatever . . . it’s all off the record,” Scott trailed off. “See you tomorrow.”
Candy got up to leave. “Hey, kiddo, join me at the Outback tonight at 8 P.M. A few of us are getting together to throw back a couple. If you haven’t been there before, the Bloomin’ Onion is delish.” John King passed by, holding his gym bag. Candy couldn’t resist taking a shot. “Hey, Johnny boy, need a lift to soccer practice?”
“Very funny, Candy,” said John pertly. “FYI, I’m going to a spinning class and I’m driving myself, thank you.” And he was off.
“So will I see you later?” Candy asked me.
“Sure, I’ll be there.” I was only half listening. I wanted to catch up with Helen before she left the building.
I caught her just as she was walking into the pressroom. “Hello, Helen. Have you got a second?”
“Of course, Mo dear. I’m sorry our conversation ended so abruptly yesterday. I was awfully rude, I’m afraid. I hope you’re not upset with me.” She seemed genuinely embarrassed.
“Oh please, Helen, that’s absurd. I was afraid that you might not be well and I was just rambling on. Believe me, I have no bone to pick with you.” That last sentence seemed to make her wince. “I just wanted to take you up on your offer, to hear some old stories, get some advice. I think I’m going to need it.”
She smiled. “You’re going to be fine, Mo. You’ve got to have tenacity in this business, especially with this White House. Something tells me you’re pretty dogged.” That last word startled me, considering the previous night’s canine occurrence. Of course I didn’t want to let my imagination wander in Helen’s presence.
“So what do you say?” I offered. “Can we maybe grab a cup of coffee? There’s a Starbucks at Farragut North.”
She cut me off. “Follow me.” Then in a hushed tone, “I know where we can find some peace and quiet.”
“Careful, she likes ’em young,” snickered Dana Milbank as we left together, not onto the North Lawn, but down the stairs to the lower floor of the pressroom. I wasn’t sure where Helen was taking me.
“Nut job,” coughed Nina Totenberg as we passed her on the stairs.
Helen took me to her tiny cubicle way in the back corner. It was fairly cluttered with books, papers, and issues of Reader’s Digest dating back to 1911. The floor needed a good vacuuming, seeing as it was covered in a danderlike fuzz. A pair of sensible shoes sat by the wall.
“Are those Easy Spirit shoes?” I asked. “My great-aunt used to wear—Ouch!”
Without warning Helen had grabbed my wrist with her hand—it felt more like a claw—and yanked me under the desk. With lightning speed she pushed through the lower part of the wall. Suddenly we were crouched in some sort of crawl space.
The White House, like any old mansion, has all sorts of tiny nooks and crannies, maybe even secret rooms. Was this the room where Clinton had allegedly menaced Kathleen Willey? According to her testimony, she had a can of Diet Coke as a last line of defense. I only had my notepad and a copy of Cat Fancy magazine, which coincidentally had a great article on former First Cat Socks.
“Helen, what’s going on?”
Helen wasn’t wasting any time. She made sure the hatch behind us was closed tight
, then dragged me down a passageway, through another door and down a long dusky stairwell. It all happened so quickly that I was convinced nobody saw us. But where were we? I knew there was at least one basement level; it was on all the available floor plans of the White House. It was my understanding that with the gutting of the White House during the Truman administration at the beginning of the Cold War, that another lower level was added—a bunker for the President and his staff for The Day After and beyond. But we seemed to be going lower than any imaginable bunker. Was this the secure location where Dick Cheney lived during orange alerts?
Just as it turned pitch black, the stairs ended and we came up against a wall. Helen went rummaging through her big black purse, pulled out an ancient and oversize key, then unlocked a thick steel door. She pushed it forward and we stepped inside.
Suddenly we were standing in a Victorian parlor, or secret annex. Gaslight fixtures illuminated tattered dark red silk damask wallpaper. The floors were covered with contrasting and overlapping oriental carpets, all of which clashed with the walls, as was the fashion in the mid-nineteenth century.
In the middle of the room was a large round pedestal table onto which Helen tossed her purse. In the center of the table sat a majestic marble bust that looked eerily like Helen. It must have been a coincidence, though, since I recognized the initials at its base as those of late-eighteenth-century French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. “You like the bust?” asked Helen. “Tony was the best.”
A small rosewood piano—similar to one I’d seen at the Ulysses S. Grant home in Galena, Illinois—sat close by. “It’s actually a melodian,” Helen said. “And it’s a heck of a lot easier to play than the harpsichord.”
On the far wall several ceiling-high shelves of books lined up perpendicularly to the rest of the room. It wasn’t clear how far back they went.
Helen kicked off her shoes, plopped herself down on a Turkish daybed—not unlike one I’d seen at James Garfield’s house in Mentor, Ohio—and propped herself up against a red velvet pillow. “Take a load off,” she said.
I was speechless. Rather than sit down on her horsehair ottoman—a dead ringer for the one at James Buchanan’s Wheatland estate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—I wanted to explore every inch of Helen’s lair. No one would ever believe me when I’d tell them what I’d seen, but at least I could remember it for myself.
The most intriguing piece was a massive mahogany cabinet against the wall opposite where Helen now reclined. On display on one shelf were mementos and curios from Helen’s career at the White House, chief among them autographed pictures of her with different Chief Executives dating back to Kennedy. But I was more interested in the shelf above, which was lined with pictures of all the different presidential pets. Digital, Polaroids, black-and-whites, daguerreotypes, even a miniature Gilbert Stuart portrait of what appeared to be Washington’s beloved steed Nelson.
“What a lovely lithograph,” I said, pointing to another piece. “I’ve never seen a representation of John Quincy Adams’s silkworms.”
“I like that, too. Getting Henry Adams to part with it was a bitch.” Peculiar. Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy, died in 1918.
“There’s so much I want to ask right now, Helen. For starters, where am I?”
“This is my home. It’s been here for . . . a long time.” Helen paused, and she sat deep in thought for a moment. “I only want to tell you what I think you can handle, Mo. I’d rather we move slowly. It’s better for the both of us.”
I was a bit indignant that I’d been dragged halfway to the center of the earth below the White House only to be told that I’d have to wait for the explanation. But I was also thrilled. Helen had literally opened a door to a place I didn’t know existed. For the first time in my career I could very well be on to something big.
“Okay, I’ll take it slowly. These pictures of the pets, naturally I’m curious. Why the interest?”
Helen came over to the cabinet and started looking them over. “Oh, let’s just say I’ve always felt my own connection to the presidential pets. If they could talk, they’d tell you some stories.”
“Yes, some of them are cute,” I agreed.
“That’s one way of putting it,” she answered curtly. She caught herself and spoke more gently. “Look at the Kennedys here.” She showed me a picture of Jack and Jackie with Caroline and John-John, tanned, healthy, and happy, with Charlie the Welsh terrier and Pushinka the beautiful white half husky. Pushinka was a gift to Jackie from Soviet premier Khrushchev and the daughter of the famed space dog Strelka.
Helen probably had especially fond memories of the Kennedy administration. She was a brand-new White House reporter back in 1961, full of ambition. Although she was restricted to covering Jackie (that was a “woman’s beat”), her memories of the Camelot period were bound to be extra sweet. “Those dogs were special,” she said meaningfully.
“Oh, I’m sure they were lots of fun.” It was a lovely picture.
“I don’t think you’re getting me.” She looked hard at me. “Sit down.” I sat. She opened a drawer, pulled out a manuscript, and tossed it on my lap. It was an edited draft for a magazine piece that she’d written. Right off the bat the title was crossed out.
“ ‘The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Honest to Dog Truth,’
by Helen Thomas, Ladies’ Home Journal. First draft, October 29, 1962,”
“Don’t stop now,” she said.
9
How the Pupniks Saved Civilization
As a rookie gal reporter in our nation’s capital, there’s no place more exciting to cover than the White House, home of our Commander-in-Chief. Recent events have had all of us feeling a bit on edge but that hasn’t stopped Mrs. Kennedy from continuing her stunning restoration of the presidential mansion. Already it’s come a long way since the days when Abigail Adams hung laundry in the East Room.
Last year the First Lady invited me to follow her around during a series of visits spanning eighteen months. The first took place in April of 1961. Mrs. Kennedy’s press secretary, Miss Letitia Baldrige, led me to the beautifully refurbished elliptical Blue Room, where I waited for the First Lady, who was understandably delayed by the innumerable obligations that come with her position as Chief Hostess.
With a spectacular view of the South Lawn, the French Empire Blue Room, with its suite of gilded furniture and marble-top center table, was the site of Grover Cleveland’s 1886 exchange of wedding vows with the beautiful Frances Folsom, and an appropriate place for cooling my heels. The Clevelands were the last couple before the Kennedys to raise small children in the White House and the oh-so-precious gold-plated miniature carousel I found there, a gift from Charles de Gaulle, demonstrated that it is indeed a long way from Cleveland to Camelot!
Mrs. Kennedy rushed in, flush with excitement and trailed by her dashing friend and designer to the stars, Oleg Cassini. Mrs. Kennedy, as entrancing as the photographs suggest, and Mr. Cassini were accompanied by a short Spanish man with a cello case, all three weighed down with shopping bags from all the best boutiques.
“Miss Thomas, please forgive me! Saks is a terrible labyrinth. But Oleg and I have conceived of the most new look for me today. It’s really too exciting. Oh pardon me, have you met world-famous cellist Pablo Casals?” The cellist greeted me warmly. “Senor Casals joined us for espresso. I insisted he stay on.” Mrs. Kennedy’s White House is indeed a salon to rival any in Europe.
Just then a beautiful white dog, part husky, pulled up the rear.
“Oh, and you must say hello to Pushinka, the latest addition to the family.” The recent gift from Soviet premier Khrushchev to Mrs. Kennedy of Pushinka, the daughter of pioneering space dog Strelka, was rumored to have been a source of some disagreement between the President and First Lady. Dare I ask?
“Oh, the President is a man and any man can be incorrigible.”
Just then the President himself came in, trailed by his Welsh terrier Charlie, a fine-looking dog with the swagger of a yo
ung Bill Holden. The President greeted the First Lady:
“Jackie, have you seen my corticosteroids? Damned Addison’s is flaring up again.” Almost an afterthought, the President smiled tightly at Mr. Cassini, Mr. Casals, and yours truly. Mr. Cassini gave an extravagant bow.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I haven’t,” said Mrs. Kennedy, then under her breath added, “It wouldn’t hurt to smile at Pushinka. She’s such a sweetie.”
The President responded in a similarly hushed tone. “We’ve been through this before, Jackie. You cannot accept gifts from the enemy and expect me to be happy about it. We’re in a Cold War, I’ve got a Bay of Pigs fiasco on my hands, and I’m out of Lomotil!”
Naturally the rest of us pretended not to hear this heated exchange. I turned to the dog in question and she said to me, in quite a thick Russian accent, “Stupid Americans.” I was the only one who heard. I must say I was surprised by Pushinka’s outspokenness—and the President’s.
“Pushinka can stay as long as she checks out with the doctors at Walter Reed,” said the President.
“But, Jack, she doesn’t need a doctor. She’s in perfectly good health. Why, if she were a horse, I’d fit her with a bridle this very instant!”
Mrs. Kennedy did look particularly smart in jodhpurs.
“Jackie, we can’t mess with security. She could very well be bugged by the KGB.”
Pushinka turned back to me and banged her paw on the floor indignantly. “ ‘Bugged’? I am certainly cleaner than American dog.”
Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara suddenly poked his head in the door. “Mr. President, we’ve got a Bay of Pigs Fiasco meeting in ten minutes. The Joint Chiefs are losing patience with you.”
