Did I ever tell you about the time my mom was dating a Watergate burglar? ________________________________________________ RICHARD THE REPUBLICAN My parents divorced in 1970 when Richard Nixon was in office. Not too long afterward, my mom began dating a high-powered Washington attorney, also named Richard. Mom was an avid skier as was Richard, and they had met through mutual friends while on vacation in Aspen. Richard was either estranged from his wife or was already divorced at the time, I can’t remember. Richard held a very high-profile position in Washington, and I recall my mom telling me they were keeping it hush-hush that they were dating; it wasn’t public knowledge that Richard was separated. I wasn’t to discuss Richard with my friends at school, many of whom were the children of prominent DC lobbyists and, more significantly, of journalists. I took an immediate dislike to the guy. For one thing, Richard was really, really Republican. I remember wondering what on earth had gotten into my far-left, feminist, bleeding heart liberal mother’s head to let this man within twenty feet of her. I decided that he must be an excellent skier. Richard was self-important, annoying and extremely smart. To my infinite frustration, he delightedly returned every single bit of sarcasm I served to him. Not surprisingly, he was an excellent tennis player, too. A sidenote about the style of the period. This was during my Grateful Dead phase, and I was wearing ragged tie-dyed t-shirts and sporting a head of thick, wavy tumbleweed hair held in place by one of those faux Native American forehead bands that were so popular in the 60s and early 70s. I’m sure I looked frightful to my parents and their friends. And that was the idea. In the mid-70s, fashion in men’s neckties had reached its all-time nadir. Wide, loud and given to disorienting paisley themes, these psychedelic cravats were downright spectacular in their garishness. Richard’s neckties, however, were tacky by even those standards. He favored magenta and chartreuse shades that could be seen fifty paces away, even in the dark. I recall upon meeting Richard, informing him that his rumpled electric blue-patterned necktie looked like it had died and gone to hell. “Great,” he shot back. “Then it should go beautifully with your hair.” My uncle and aunt, a republican federal judge and his wife, adored Richard and frequently invited him and Mom over to their club for tennis and drinks. I think my uncle secretly hoped Mom would end up marrying Richard. Then he would have backup in his political arguments with Mom, which he always lost. “Hey Richard,” I loved to ask him, “How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb?” He gave me different answers each time I asked, but my favorite was, “We’ll never know, because those idiot Democrats in Congress won’t let us change ANYTHING!” Richard was arrogant to spectacular degree about his high-ranking position in the Nixon Administration. And I was even more arrogant than he was, simply due to being a teenager. He was sarcastic, irritating and full of himself, just like me. But, never intimidating or scary. Apart from his neckties, there was nothing the least bit dangerous about him. He was harmless. In June 1972, the news of the Watergate break-ins hit. I wasted no time finding ways to ridicule President Nixon to Richard the Republican. One night shortly after the burglaries came on the airwaves, Richard came over to our house. I pounced as he walked in the door, asking him delightedly if it had occurred to him that both he and Richard Nixon were Dicks. But that night, Richard wasn’t in a mood for our jousting. He stared mutely at the television, listening with a strange intensity as Walter Cronkite deconstructed the spectacular mosaic of bungling that was Watergate. At one point, Richard got up, grabbed my moms pack of Marlboros from the table and went out on the patio to have a cigarette. Unsurprising except for the fact that Richard didnt smoke. After awhile, a Mercedes pulled up to the front of the house. Richard, who had been keeping one eye on the window and the other on the TV, bolted out the door and strode across the lawn to the car. He stood talking to someone on the passenger side for at least half an hour. At one point, I heard him raise his voice. It was hard to make out what he was saying, but we could hear him repeating the name “Gordon” over and over. He sounded furious. My mother, passing through the living room with her martini, paused to look out the window and listen. “Oh God,” I heard her mutter angrily under her breath as she walked back toward the kitchen, “that crazy Gordon...” A day or two later, Mom suddenly announced that she wouldn’t be seeing Richard anymore. She was visibly upset, but I remember feeling unclear whether she was actually upset about breaking up with Richard, or about something else entirely. It was almost like the breakup was beside the point. We were all surprised, since despite their political differences they had seemingly gotten along well and been on more skiing trips together than I could count. I was secretly a little disappointed at losing my sparring partner in snark, but was too busy being a rebellious teenager to spend much time dwelling on it. Soon afterward, Richard was in the news along with his associate, that crazy Gordon and the others. Everyone was astounded – except, apparently for Mom. Richard never went to jail. For several months afterward, we all naturally assumed that this very public revelation had been the thing that had compelled my mom to break up with Richard. We were wrong. In 1974 I was transferred to a high school in an adjacent neighborhood. I was immediately impressed with the kids at the new school. Their parents were diplomats, scientists, politicians, professors, spies, and journalists. Also, my new friends’ mothers overwhelmingly held advanced degrees. I remember feeling completely inadequate because my mom only had a master’s degree while most of my friends’ moms held doctorates and worked at NIH. One of my favorite new friends was the son of a prominent Washington journalist. A tall, handsome kid with long blond hair and a complete disregard for authority, he looked just like Jim Dandy, the frontman for the hair band Black Oak Arkansas. Upon meeting me, he immediately invited me to his family’s beach house. He could have invited me to a public reading of the phone book and I’d have said yes. Because he is still alive and still in touch with me, for the purposes of this story I’ll call him “Jim”. Of course, in order to get permission to take bring me to the beach, Jim would first have to meet my mother, so that she could subject him to the “Scottish Inquisition” as my dad had once dubbed it. But I was confident that Mom, who had always bemoaned the scraggly miscreants I’d brought home heretofore, would be thrilled with this well-mannered boy. A hurricane hit the nearby beach resorts, delaying the planned trip. A few weeks later, however, my mother had occasion to pick me up at the house of a friend who was having a party. Jim was at the party with me, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone by offering him my moms chauffeur services home. As we got in the car, I cheerfully made introductions. Mom, who used these occasions to charm my friends into admissions of guilty exploits, immediately began chatting with Jim about school, his family, what his parents did for a living. Once Mom got you in the crosshairs, there was no holding back. Jim was enthralled with her and she obviously found him charming. On and on they chatted, until he got to the part about how his dad was a well-known muckraker with a weekly column in the Washington Post. I couldn’t see Mom’s face from the back seat, but there was no mistaking the sudden change in her voice and manner. She had made some connection between this boy and something that was not good. Something that was not at all charming. “Son… tell me your dad’s first name.” As Jim proudly confirmed this bit of well-known information, Mom fell silent. She also suddenly became extremely interested in getting to our destination as quickly as possible. Jim chattered on, oblivious to the fact that she had stopped dazzling him, or speaking to him at all. The instant he was out of the car, Mom hit the gas and fixed her eyes on the road ahead. I was stunned. “What’s the matter, Mom? Didn’t you like him?” She drove on in silence until we got home. As we pulled up to the house, she shut off the engine and turned to face me. She was as white as a sheet and she gripped my arm, hard. “You are never to see that boy again outside of class, or speak to him again. OR anyone in his family,” she said with a vehemence that froze me. I dont want you talking on the phone to him, either. Do you understand me? Never.” Normally upon hearing such words I would have launched a counteroffensive so fierce that she would be stunned into concessions like more weekend sleepovers or a larger clothing allowance. But I could see that something was truly wrong. My mother was frightened, and she wasn’t talking. And by that age I knew - anything that frightened my tough, smooth-talking mom to the point of silence had to be really scary. Mom continued to hold onto my arm, waiting for an answer. I was too shocked to do anything but mutter, “Yeah, yeah, I understand. Never.” I broke up with Jim the next day between homeroom and biology class. Breakups when you’re fifteen last about as long as it takes you and your friends to get bored with calling each other about it. Neither he nor I were particularly upset; I think we both forgot about it by the following week. The reasons why my mom had been so adverse to my seeing Jim or speaking with him remained murky. But the sound of her voice in the car that night remains in my memory with absolute clarity to this day. And then came the night, years later, when I happened to be at a party with a journalist who knew that my mother had dated Richard years before. He was researching an alleged murder conspiracy within the Nixon Administration. A plot to murder Jims father, the muckraker who had gone after Nixon so many times in print. The journalist began to list the high-ranking Nixon administration conspirators involved. When he finally got to the name I recognized, I felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room. Now it was crystal clear why Mom had broken it off with Richard in 1972. Why she had made me end all contact with Jim once she learned who his father was. And why annoying, funny Richard, with his psychedelic neckties and snappy comebacks, was anything but harmless. I thought of confronting my mother, but realized that knowledge of any alleged plot was something that she would never admit to me or anyone else, both for her safety and mine. Richard died twelve years ago. I heard it on the news and then Mom called to make sure I knew. I was silent at the news. Trying to change the mood, Mom reminded me of the verbal sparring matches that Richard and I used to have. “Yes. And, those neckties... ” I trailed off. We talked about what an interesting time for us those years that had been. And then Mom, knowing what we were both thinking, said, “I always felt bad about making you break up with Jim. He seemed like such a nice kid.” I didn’t need to say anything; she knew I understood. I asked her if she’d ever missed Richard in the years after she’d broken it off with him. I couldn’t see her face, of course. But when she replied, her voice sounded exactly as fierce as it had that night in 1974. “Never.” And that is the last we ever spoke of Richard the Republican.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 16:50:30 +0000
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