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 Inez 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.”
There was a silence. Billy Dillon cradled the telephone against his shoulder and mimed a backhand volley. “It’s a game, Inez, it’s tennis,” Billy Dillon always said to Inez about interviews. It was a routine between them. I had seen him do it that morning, when Inez said that since I had come especially to see her she did not want to do the AP interview. “Sure you do,” Billy Dillon had said. “It’s only going to last x minutes. Finite time. For those x minutes you’re here to play. You’re going to place the ball”—here Billy Dillon had paused, and executed a shadow serve—“inside the lines. The major cost of public life is privacy, Inez, that’s an easy shot. The hardest part about Washington life is finding a sitter for the Gridiron Dinner. The fun part about Washington life is taking friends from home to the Senate cafeteria for navy-bean soup. You’ve tried the recipe at home but it never tastes the same. Yes, you do collect recipes. Yes, you do worry about the rising cost of feeding a family. Ninety-nine per cent of the people you know in Washington are basically concerned with the rising cost of feeding a family. Schools. Mortgages. Programs. You’ve always viewed victory as a mandate not for a man but for his programs. Now: you view defeat with mixed emotions. Why: because you’ve learned to treasure the private moments.”
“Private moments,” Billy Dillon mouthed silently in the suite at the Hotel Doral.
Inez looked deliberately away from Billy Dillon.
“Here’s an example.” She lit a match, watched it burn, and blew it out. “You looked up the clips on me before you came here.”
“I did a little homework, yes.” The woman’s finger hovered over the stop button on her tape recorder. Now it was she who looked to me for help. I looked out the window. “Naturally. That’s my business. We all do.”