“I would love to go to Europe with you this summer, Mother.”
“Good. We will sail from West Forty-sixth Street on June 15, at noon, on the United States. My office will mail you the itinerary and hotels and indicate the shape of appointments and meetings, business and social. Would you like to see the Pope?”
“No.”
“I’ll do that alone then.”
“What else?”
“Isn’t this carpetbag steak absolutely delicious? Eating it is an absolute sexual experience! What a marvelous conception—steak and oysters, I mean. Johnny eats it all the time, you know.”
“It figures.”
“Is there anything I can get done for you in Washington, dear heart?”
“No. Thank you. Yes. Yes, there is something. I have a friend—”
“A friend? You have a friend?” She stopped chewing for a moment and put her fork down.
“Sarcasm is the cheapest kind of a crutch to humor, Mother.”
“Please forgive me, Raymond. I was not attempting sarcasm. You must believe that. I was startled. I had never heard you mention a friend in your entire life before. I am very, very happy that you do have a friend and you may be sure, darling, that if I may help your friend I most certainly will be overjoyed to do so. Who is he?”
“He’s a major in Army Intelligence in Washington.” Raymond’s mother had whipped out an efficient-looking looseleaf notebook.
“His name?”
He told her.
“Academy?” He said yes.
“Would full colonel be what you had in mind?”
“That would be fine, I guess. I hope there is some way it can be done without PI being stamped all over his personnel file.”
“What is PI?”
“Political influence.”
“Of course they’ll stamp PI all over his personnel file! Are you out of your mind? What’s wrong with letting the Board know that he happens to have a little muscle in the right places? Sweet Jesus, Raymond, if it weren’t for PI some of the brass we call our leaders would be the oldest crop of second lieutenants in military history. I swear to God, Raymond,” his mother said in extreme exasperation, chopping savagely at a large gooseberry tart that glistened with custard filling, “sometimes I think you are the most naïve of young men, and when I read your column, I am sure.”
“What’s wrong with my column?”
She held up her hand. “Not now. We will reorganize your column aboard ship in June. Right now let’s make your friend a chicken colonel.” She looked at her notes. “Now, is there anything—well, anything negative I should know about this one?”
“No. He’s a great officer. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather were great officers.”
“You know him from Korea?”
“Yes. He—he led the patrol.” Raymond hesitated because mentioning the patrol made him think of that filthy medal again and of how much his mother had made that medal mean to Johnny Iselin and what a fool she had made of herself at the White House and later what a fool Johnny had made of himself in front of the TV cameras and press cameras at that goddam, cheap, rotten, contemptuous luncheon where he had been humiliated, and all of a sudden he saw that it would be possible, too, for him to take a little bit of her skin off painfully and to kick Johnny right between the eyes with the medal nailed to the toe of his boot so that he, Raymond, would finally have a little pleasure out of that goddam medal himself, finally and at last. He was patiently quiet until she sensed the meaning of his hesitation and took it up.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Well, there is one thing which the Army might figure as negative. In the past. I think it’s all right now.”
“He’s a fairy?”
“Hah!”
“This little negative thing. You say you think it’s all right now?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think you should tell me what it is?”
“Mother, are you going to put Johnny up for the Presidency at the convention next year?”
“Raymond, shall we make your friend a colonel or not? I don’t think Johnny can make it for the Presidency. I may go after the number-two spot.”
“Will you enter him in the primaries next spring?”
“I don’t think so. He has too much strength for that. I don’t think I need any popularity contests for Johnny. Now—about the negative side of the major.”
Raymond folded his hands neatly before him on the table. “He’s been in Army psychiatric hospitals twice in the past year.”
“Oh, that’s all,” she drawled sarcastically and shrugged. “And all the time I thought it might have been something which could present a problem. My God, Raymond! A psycho! Have you ever seen what that looks like when it’s stamped across a personnel file?”
“It’s not what you might think, Mother. You see, due to an experience in Korea, a very vivid experience, he has been suffering from recurring nightmares.”
“Is that right?”
“What happened to him could give anyone nightmares. In fact, it might even give you a nightmare or two after you hear it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s quite a story and I’m involved in it up to my ears.”
Her voice picked up a cutting edge. “How are you involved?” she asked.
He told her. When he had finished explaining that Marco had decided to demand his own court-martial to prove falsification and collusion in conjunction with the conferment of that Medal of Honor, savoring each word and each shocked look on his mother’s face with great and deep satisfaction, she was the color of milk and her hand trembled.
“How dare he?”
“Why, Mother, it is his duty. Surely you can see that?”
“How dare the contemptible, psychoneurotic, useless, filthy little military servant of a—?” She choked on it.
Raymond was startled at the intensity of her attack. She brought her fist down on the tabletop with full force from two feet above it, in full tantrum, and the glasses, plates, and silver jumped and a full water pitcher leaped into the air to crash to the floor. Everyone in the dining room turned to stare and some stood up to look. A waiter dashed toward the table and went to his hands and knees, fussing with the sopping carpet and the fragments of heavy glass. She kicked him in the thigh as she sat, with vicious vigor. “Get out of here, you miserable flunky,” she said. The waiter stood up slowly, staring at her, breathing shallowly. Then he left abruptly. She stood up, breathing heavily, with sweat shining on her upper lip. “I’ll help your friend, Raymond,” she said with violence in her voice. “I’ll help him to defame and destroy an American hero. I’ll cheer him as he spits upon our flag.” She left him there, striding rapidly through knots of people and attendants, shouldering some. Raymond stared after her, knowing he had lost again but not knowing what he had lost. But he was not dismayed, because losing was Raymond’s most constant feeling.
She went to the manager’s office in the hotel. She brushed past his secretary and slammed the door behind her. She said she was the wife of Senator John Yerkes Iselin and that the two people then meeting with the manager, two barber-pinked businessmen each wearing a florid carnation, would oblige her by leaving the room. They excused themselves and left immediately, vaguely fearful of being proved Communists. She told the manager that it would be necessary to use his office and his telephone and that it would be necessary for her to have utter privacy as she would be talking about an emergency matter with the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and that she would greatly appreciate it, in fact she would regard it as a patriotic service, as would indeed her husband, Senator Iselin, if he were to go to the telephone switchboard in person and direct the placement of the call to the Secretary, reversing the charges, and standing by at the operator’s shoulder to make sure there was no eavesdropping on the call, a natural and human tendency under the circumstances.