Wry Martinis

by Christopher Buckley

  Despite the changes that have sent her turban twirling over the past forty years—she’s gone from bad breath to AIDS, from spoiled brats to machine-pistol-wielding ten-year-olds, from a puff of pot to crack babies (about 15 percent of the letters she gets now are drug-related)—she still sounds somewhat reassuring. “The problems basically have not changed in forty years,” she told me. “The basic problems are family problems. This is No. 1. It’s always been that way, and I suspect it’s always going to be that way.”

  DEAR ANN LANDERS:

  Last May my husband asked me if he could wear one of my house-dresses while painting the kitchen. He said it would be more comfortable. I said OK. He did look awfully cute, and I told him so. Ever since that time he has been wearing my dresses and wigs and makeup when we are alone. He has asked me to call him Linda when we “play girl friends” as he calls it.… I can truthfully say I don’t mind.… Is there anything wrong with it?

  Happy Woman Who

  Loves Her Husband

  DEAR WOMAN:

  My opinion is of no consequence. The only thing that matters is what you think, and apparently you think it is just fine.… Just make sure the doors are locked and the shades down. And say hello to Linda.

  “Now,” she says after the waiter assures her that the crab cakes are on their way. “What about you?”

  This is a legacy from her father, Abe, who once told her, “You never learn anything while you’re talking.” But there is nothing to learn from me, other than my yearning to wear a housedress and Manolo Blahniks and have my wife call me Lulu, so we talk some more about her, about a few issues of the day, and about people who have figured in her very public life.

  How much money the column earns her: “Oh, I wouldn’t answer that. You know that. But when I started to do this I was not interested in the money. I was married to a man whose wealth supported me very well.”

  Her sister’s column: “I just don’t discuss her in any piece on me. And there have been a lot of good pieces on her, and my name doesn’t come up, and I think that’s the way it should be.”

  Politics: “I make a concerted effort to keep politics out of my column. You can’t tell from my column whether I’m a Democrat or a Republican.”

  David Brinkley: “A master at letting other people talk.”

  George Will: “He can’t resist the temptation to tell you how smart he is.”

  Ted Koppel: “I’ve always thought that he would make a terrific lawyer.”

  Geraldo Rivera: “Oh, he’s so trashy.”

  Guns: “The proliferation of guns in this country is unreal.”

  The National Rifle Association: “I have nothing more to say to these people.”

  Interracial marriages: “One subject I have not dealt with in a column, because the roof would fall in, and I don’t need that.”

  Marijuana laws: “Ridiculous. I don’t want it legalized, but I don’t think you should have to go to jail for ten years if you get caught smoking a joint.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt: “A great woman. A great woman. Big woman. I was amazed when I met her. I mean, she’s huge. She asked a lot of questions, which I found interesting.”

  Senator Joseph McCarthy: “Living in Wisconsin, I would run into him and he would grab me and hug me. And I couldn’t bear it. Because I disliked him intensely.”

  Nixon: “Same thing with Nixon. He would always greet me very warmly, and I couldn’t bear it. He never got it.”

  Joseph Kennedy, Sr.: “A monster. Duplicitous, mean-spirited, anti-Semitic.”

  Meeting President Kennedy in the Oval Office when she went there as the national chairman of the Christmas Seals campaign against TB: “He was so attractive. A knockout. Sex appeal oozed from his every pore. He was the womanizer from Hell. I mean, this guy had women all over the place. In the swimming pool, the locker room. Of course, he had a bum back, for one thing, and the women had to do all the work.”

  Teddy Kennedy: “A superb senator. Superb. Standing up for all the right things.… I know, Chappaquiddick—and being drunk is no excuse, and he was plenty drunk that night, plenty drunk. But he certainly— If you can redeem yourself from a thing like that, he has done it.”

  Ronald Reagan: “A sweet guy. You know, he’s totally gone. I had a letter from Nancy just a few weeks ago, and she said, ‘I feel like half a person.’ ”

  Nancy Reagan: “People used to make fun of the Nancy gaze, but she really meant it. They really were so in love with each other that they had no room in their hearts for their children. This is one of the sad things.”

  Hillary Clinton: “I like her enormously She’s badly mistreated by the press, badly mistreated.… She doesn’t deserve this.”

  Bill Clinton: “I don’t think he’s fooling around anymore. Nor do I think he will. I read that Hillary threw a lamp at him. I read that. Did you read that? You know something? I think she did.”

  Bill and Hillary Clinton: “They make their own fun, those two. They make their own fun.”

  Vince Foster’s suicide, Whitewater, etc.: “Not much fun there.”

  Her friendship with Father Hesburgh: “The greatest unfertilized romance in the history of the world.”

  The Catholic Church’s problem with priests who can’t keep their hands off the altar boys: “Terrible. They just move them around. They don’t throw them out. Now they’re getting a little smarter, because they’re getting sued. I think, with these problems, eventually the Church is going to have to let the clergy marry.”

  Bishop Fulton J. Sheen: “Do you remember him? He was a friend of mine. He was charismatic beyond belief. I first heard him speak when I was living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I went backstage to meet him. He looked at me and said, ‘The metaphysics of a dimple is more profound than simple.’ I said, What is going on here with this guy?”

  Her visit with him in Washington: “He opened the door at this gorgeous home, great big St. Bernard, like a country gentleman. Living in this estate with this wonderful dog and a Lincoln and driver. I said, ‘Not bad for a fellow who took the oath of poverty.’ And he said, ‘Well, Esther’—he called me Esther, which I thought was interesting—‘I’m not an order priest, I’m a diocesan priest, and I didn’t take the oath of poverty’ I said, ‘Good for you. You did it right.’ He had converted Clare Boothe Luce, and people thought maybe this was going to happen to me, and when I told them I was going to visit him they said, ‘Uh-oh, be careful.’ I said, ‘This is not going to happen. I’m Jewish for life.’ ”

  On meeting Pope John Paul II: “Looks like an angel. He has the face of an angel. His eyes are sky blue, and his cheeks are pink and adorable-looking, and he has a sweet sense of humor. Of course, he’s a Polack.” Laughter. “They’re very antiwomen.”

  Why she hangs out with so many Catholics: “I don’t remember my father having any Jewish friends. They were all goyim. He seemed to gravitate to the Gentiles, especially the Catholics.”

  The North Carolina judge who announced that raped women could not get pregnant because “the juices don’t flow”: “Did you ever hear of anything so crazy?”

  The British Royal Family situation: “It’s so sad.”

  Roseanne: “A psychopath.”

  The dessert tray: “Forget about that. I’ve got a divine lemon-meringue pie at home.”

  She leads the way to the study in her apartment, through corridors hung with drawings by her grandchildren and editorial cartoons in which she is mentioned. Her study is crammed with four decades of trophies: keys to what seem to be most American cities and some foreign ones as well; a huge collage of more than a thousand logos of papers that carry the column, including the Oneonta Star, the Calgary Herald, and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal; and a host of photographs of her standing next to famous people. The shot with President Jimmy Carter shows him clasping her in a rather intimate clinch. (“He wasn’t just lusting in his heart,” she wisecracks.) Here she is with Walter Annenberg (“wonderful dancer”), with Hubert Humphrey, with Reagan. A f
ramed triptych of Ted Hesburgh shows him on the day he began at Notre Dame, during the middle of his reign, and on his last day, cleaning out his desk. It is signed, “To Eppie, L but no K, Devotedly, Ted.” The “L” stands for “love,” the “K” for “kisses”—a long-standing joke between them. Among the dozens of honorary degrees hung on the wall, she points out a photograph of Hesburgh and her, both in cap and gown, after receiving honorary degrees from St. Leo College, in Florida. The priest is planting a big wet K on her cheek.

  She has lived alone in the apartment since 1975, which is when she split up with Jules, her husband of thirty-six years. When the reporters found out that Ann Landers, who for twenty years had been advising couples to stick it out for the sake of the children, was getting divorced, the result was—surprise!—a full-court press stakeout downstairs.

  She wrote about the divorce in the column, telling her readers that she wanted them to hear it from her and not from the National Enquirer; and that she and Jules had had a wonderful relationship but had now decided to go their separate ways. The column was shorter than usual. She asked editors to leave the rest of the space blank, in honor, as she put it, of a great marriage that never made it to the finish line. She received thirty thousand tear-drenched letters of support from her readers.

  “What happened was,” she says in her sharp Midwestern voice, “he had another dame.” An eyebrow arches, the right dimple deepens like a Florida sinkhole. “He told my daughter about it, but he didn’t tell me. And this went on and on. Finally, my daughter told him, ‘This is a pretty lousy thing you’re doing here’—he was keeping this woman in our apartment in London. ‘I’m going to give you thirty days, and if you don’t tell her I’m going to tell her.’ On the thirtieth day, she called him up and said, ‘Well, thirty days is up.’ But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. So she called me and said, ‘When Daddy comes home for dinner, ask him if he’s got anything he wants to tell you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, boy.’ So I did. And he said he’s had this other woman for three years. ‘That’s the way it is,’ he said. And I said, ‘I’m glad you told me. The marriage is over.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, quite surprised. ‘Maybe we can work something out.’ I said, ‘No. No way’ He asked me to give him a few months to move out. I said, ‘I’m not going to give you a lot of time, but I’ll give you some time.’ Finally, it occurred to me that he wasn’t going to move out. He was just hanging around hoping I’d change my mind. Five weeks went by, and he’s still there. I said, ‘Look, Jules, I don’t think you’ve got the message. I’m going to Athens in two weeks to get an honorary degree. When I come back, I want you out of here.’ I went out and bought two dozen pairs of black socks, two dozen pairs of brown socks, two dozen handkerchiefs, a dozen shirts, and a dozen pairs of shorts; wrote down the number of the doctor, the drugstore, and the cleaning establishment, and a suggestion for a laundress. They know nothing about this. And I said good-bye and good luck. And that was it.”

  She is single but not unattached. Her companion—she calls him “my gentleman friend”—is a prosperous, well-connected lawyer. They dote on each other, travel together, and synergistically network in the Democratic stables. A month before I went to Chicago, there was this message on my answering machine: “It’s Eppie! I’m in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House. I’m having a very good time with the Clintons. I’m calling everyone I know to show off.”

  On the bookshelves in her study are copies of Miss Lonelyhearts, Balm in Gilead, The Joy of Sex, Portnoy’s Complaint, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. A bust of Lincoln looks down on a desk strewn with photographs, clippings, and correspondence, including a thank-you letter from the Hereditary Disease Foundation in Santa Monica. Eppie explains, “A reader in Michigan wrote and said, ‘I have money but I don’t like my family, what should I do?’ And I said, ‘Give it to the Hereditary Disease Foundation.’ ” He did. The thank-you letter is, as you might guess, effusive. According to the Chicago Tribune, a single column she wrote on another occasion resulted in $100 million for cancer research.

  Amid the desk clutter are five bottles of Liquid Paper correction fluid. She writes at home on an IBM Selectric III. She has eight secretaries and two clerks at her Tribune office, ten blocks away.

  About a thousand people write to her each day. The assistants winnow the letters down to about two hundred, and sort those into categories. She shows me her bundles, piled on a chair near the desk, and asks, “What have we got today?”

  Today we have “Bad Doctors,” “Singles,” “Chivalry,” “North Carolina Judge,” and “Jewish.”

  I ask to see what they’re talking about in “Jewish.”

  She reads, “ ‘Dear Ann, We are Jewish parents whose thirty-three-year-old daughter says that she is a Jewish Christian. Jesus is the messiah and Jews and Christians worship the same god. How do you react to such a daughter? We are both shocked and distraught.’ ”

  What’s happening in “Chivalry”?

  A recent column featured a letter from a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy who complained that no one on the bus would give up a seat. The men, Eppie says, are writing in. “This one says, ‘They want equal rights? We’ll give them equal rights. These macho women have brought this on themselves.’ ” She pulls out another: “ ‘Dear Ann, I have come up with a simple solution. Why not let the women sit on the men’s laps? This will completely eliminate the seating problem and no doubt bring joy and frivolity all along.’ Signed, ‘Bus Rider in Florida.’ ”

  The copy of Miss Lonelyhearts on the shelf prompts my next question.

  Her answer is, “You have to insulate yourself against what is coming at you. Otherwise, you go right to pieces. I’ve had some letters that are very, very sad. And hopeless. ‘I’m a twenty-seven-year-old and I’ve never had a date, and I probably never will, because I’ve been in a wheel-chair for ten years. I just wish that some nice man could see beyond the wheelchair.’ What do you tell them? What do you say to these people?”

  She talks about a trip she made to Vietnam in 1967. She had been getting a lot of letters from the boys. “They were not happy warriors, and I decided to go and visit them in the hospital, and that was a tremendous experience. I would sit on the bed, which you’re not supposed to do, and they loved the closeness. They said, ‘Boy, I haven’t smelled perfume in two years.’ And I said, ‘You could be dangerous.’ You know—just to have a lot of fun with them.” She brought back three hundred phone numbers. “Calling them took me three days. I had notes—‘Leg gone,’ ‘Eye out,’ ‘Gerald Swanson, he lives in Akron, call mother.’ I called up these people. ‘This is Ann Landers and I’m calling from Chicago and I just got back from Vietnam and I saw George. He’s in the hospital. He has a cold, and they didn’t want it to get any worse.’ ” She adds, “A lot of colds. I just was not going to get into any kind of injuries. The telephone conversations I had with these people! I made friends for life.”

  It’s getting late—the time of night when you can hear the clocks ticking. She talks about her father’s coming over from Vladivostok. We speculate. What if Abe Friedman had stayed in Russia? Assuming he escaped the pogroms, would she still be there, a babushka, shoveling snow and taking in washing for extra cash? She says she regrets never asking her parents about their parents and grandparents—the only regret she has expressed all evening. Suddenly, she blurts, “Who cares? It’s what you are today that counts, not where you came from.”

  She says she’s been lucky, adding, “I knew what to do with the luck, that’s the difference. Some people don’t know what to do with it. I recognize an opportunity. But I never envisioned anything as huge as this.”

  She has no plans to retire. “I plan to die at the typewriter. Just keel over at the machine.”

  Ann Landers will die with her. “I own the name. There will never be another Ann Landers. When I go, the name goes with me. I’ve had offers, and I mean in the millions, for that name, and I’ve absolutely— No way am I going to sell the name. The name is mine an
d that is me, and when I go the column goes with me.”

  It’s after midnight. I’m tired; she isn’t. When I leave, she will deal with “Chivalry” and “North Carolina Judge” and “Jewish” for a couple of hours. She asks the elevator man if the night doorman got the cookies she brought back from dinner for him.

  “Yes, Mrs. Lederer.”

  Riding down, I miss the quiet and the closeness and the smell of perfume. A few days later, there is a message on my machine: “It’s Eppie. All I did was talk about me. We didn’t get to talk about you.”

  —The New Yorker, 1995

  Formative Years

  Stoned in New Haven

  It was the eve of the 1975 Harvard game, and two days after Generalissimo Franco had finally, after one of the most protracted deathbed vigils in history, given up the ghost. Three Yale students climbed a three-story fire escape and made it up onto the catwalk of the billboard that still looks down on Broadway, urging new generations of Yalies to smoke, drink, eat and bank. They had brought with them a gallon of black paint and two rollers with which they wrote across the billboard in enormous letters:

  NOV 19—FRANCO

  NOV 22—HARVARD

  The cops arrived just as they reached the bottom of the fire escape and arrested them. After frisking them, they lined them up against the wall, just as in the good old days. At this point, a burly sort of sergeant stepped forward and said, “Okay, which one of you guys is Franco?”

  I don’t want to ruin the story—a habit I picked up as an English major—but as an objective correlative of my era at Yale, it’s pretty good. It works (I can hear Mr. Thorburn saying) on all levels: the perpetual misunderstanding between gown and town; the jubilation of my classmates at the death of fascism in the face of a far greater ethic: Beat Harvard. By 1975 Yale was much less uptight than it had been when I arrived, and they became heroes for a while, these three.